Video Poker Pay Table Calculator

Why the whole pay table matters

Two games can look the same and return different amounts. 9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.5439% with perfect play; take the flush down from 6 to 5 and the same game returns 98.4498%, 1.0941% less of everything you bet. At $1.25 a hand and 1,000 hands an hour, that is $13.68 an hour.

Games are named by two numbers, but other lines move too: Bonus Poker Deluxe pays only 1 for two pair, Double Bonus pays 5 for a straight, and Triple Double Bonus pays 2 for three of a kind. Type in every line from your game’s pay table, not just the full house and the flush.

Reading the answer

If your pays match one of the 21 tables the site has solved, the answer is exact at once. Change any line and the figure becomes a floor: each known strategy for the game is played on your pays, and the best of them is shown. The strategy that suits your table can only return more, and Work out the exact return finds it: every deal solved on your pays, in a few seconds, in your browser.

How much the right strategy adds depends on the change, and a progressive royal shows it well. With the royal at 1,000 for 1, a $1,250 meter at $1.25 a hand, 9/6 Jacks or Better played the usual way returns 100.0391%. Solved for the bigger royal it returns 100.0670%: the best play goes for the royal more often, and one comes once in 35,724 hands instead of once in 40,391.

Each line’s share of the return

The last column splits the return by line: each pay times how often the best play finishes on that hand, so the column adds up to the return. On 9/6 Jacks or Better, two pair has the biggest share at 25.86%, then three of a kind at 22.33% and jacks or better at 21.46%; the royal is 1.98%. What one more unit on a line is worth, re-solved line by line, is in our pay tables guide.

What it does not cover

Games with lines these five families don’t have, such as Deuces Wild Bonus, which pays extra for four deuces with an ace, or Double Joker, with two jokers in the deck, need their own figures. Multipliers and bonus features such as Ultimate X, the double-up after a win and side bets are not modelled. The figures assume five credits a hand; the strategy calculator gives the best hold for any hand on the 21 known tables, and the variance calculator shows how far a session on them can swing.