Video Poker Strategy Trainer
Get dealt hands on the pay table you play, hold the cards you would keep, and see your hold graded against all 32: right, close or a mistake, with exactly what each one returns. Then drill the close calls and the hands you got wrong.
All hands: dealt as they come, so each kind of hand turns up as often as it would online. Tap the cards you would keep, then check your hold.
Compare all 32 possible holds
Scroll sideways for the full comparison
| Hold | Draw | Possible draws | Return per 1 bet |
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Keys: 1 to 5 hold or discard a card, Enter checks your hold and deals the next hand. Your score and mistakes last until you leave the page; nothing is stored. How every hold is priced: choosing a hold.
Why drill it instead of reading a chart
A strategy chart is a ranked list of holds, and most hands are easy to place on it. The hard ones are the close calls: on 27.41% of 9/6 Jacks or Better deals the next-best hold is within 0.05 of a bet, and on 3.14% it is within 0.01. Those are the hands where habit takes over, and a habit that is slightly wrong costs a little on every one of them for as long as you play.
The trainer tells you on the spot. It deals a hand, you hold the cards you would keep, and it prices your hold against the other 31, exactly. Every hand you get wrong goes on a list: pick My mistakes to replay them, and each one drops off once you get it right.
What the grade measures
Nothing is looked up. For your hold and every other, the engine counts every card the draw can bring from the cards you have not seen and weights each final hand by what it pays on the selected pay table. A hold is right when it returns as much as the best, and when two holds tie, both are right. It is close when it gives up less than 0.05 of a bet, and a mistake beyond that.
Take the first hand, A♠ A♥ K♦ 7♣ 3♠, on 9/6 Jacks or Better. Holding the two aces returns 1.5365 for every 1 bet; keeping the king as well returns 1.4163. The king takes the place of a card that could have made three of a kind or two pair, and it gives up 0.1202 of every bet each time. Given up per hand, under the cards, averages those costs over the hands you have checked: what your choices would cost over a long run of hands like them.
Pick your pay table first
The best hold depends on the pay table, so the trainer grades against the one you choose: seven Jacks or Better tables, three Bonus Poker tables (Bonus Poker Deluxe among them), two Double Bonus, four Double Double Bonus (with Triple Double Bonus), three Deuces Wild and two Joker Poker. A hold that is right on one table can be wrong on another. Dealt K♥ K♠ Q♥ J♥ 7♣, you keep the kings on 9/6 Jacks or Better but draw to the royal with K♥ Q♥ J♥ on 9/6 Double Double Bonus. The strategy calculator shows any hand on every table at once.
How to use it
Pick the game and pay table you play. Tap the cards you would hold, or press 1 to 5, then check your hold; Enter checks it and deals the next hand. Start with All hands, which deals hands as often as they come, then switch to Close calls to work on the decisions that are easiest to get wrong. Once you have missed a few, My mistakes replays them on the pay table you played them on.
When a hand keeps catching you out, the strategy guide for your game explains the rule behind it: Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Deuces Wild or Joker Poker. Choosing a hold explains how every hold is priced.
Perfect play is what earns a game its full return: 99.54% on 9/6 Jacks or Better. Taking the next-best hold on every deal instead would cost an extra 0.1947 of every bet, more than 40 times the 0.46% house edge against perfect play.