The Video Poker Pay Table IS the Game

The RNG (random number generator) in a typical slot machine is a mysterious mechanism. What’s the payback? Who knows? It’s all a big head-game. But video poker is different becauseBasil Nestor is the author of the new Playboy Complete Guide to Casino Gambling. This wonderful book teaches players how to avoid sucker bets and win more when playing gambling games.  He is also the author of The Smarter Bet Guide series for video poker, slots, craps, and many other books about gambling.  Basil's website is www.smarterbet.com  the range of choices is fixed. The RNG simulates dealing from a shuffled deck of cards. No loose or tight machines. No mysterious house edge. The likelihood of receiving any particular hand from a real deck is identical to a video poker deck.

That makes the pay table the most important element of every video poker game. Here’s why. A casino can’t tighten or loosen a machine by changing how the cards are dealt, so the only way the house can get an edge is to change the payouts. Thus you can simply look at a pay table and (with a little practice) instantly know the casino’s edge.

Consider the pay table for the venerable original version of video poker below. It’s called 9/6 jacks-or-better because a full house pays nine credits and a flush pays six credits per credit wagered. This particular pay table returns 99.5 percent when the game is played with optimal strategy.

Jacks or Better 9/6 Pay Table

A typical pay table includes the unshaded area above. The figures in the shaded area are provided here to show you what happens when the game is played with optimal strategy. Note that each credit increases payments proportionally except for the fifth credit. The fifth credit quadruples the payment for a royal flush. Percentages are rounded.

Some casinos think that 9/6 is too generous, so they reduce the payout for a full house from nine credits to eight and a flush goes to five credits. Thus the game is called 8/5. That drops the overall payback to 97.3 percent. Lounges, convenience stores, and less competitive locations often have 6/5 machines. Those pay back only 95 percent.

Experienced players have learned to avoid the lower-paying machines, so casinos jigger pay tables in other ways to attract customers (see “Comparison of Pay Tables” below). A typical ploy is to offer a bonus for four of a kind, and then to reduce the payout somewhere else on the table where the player doesn’t notice. Double Bonus (B) looks like a 9/6 machine, but it’s not. The payout for two pairs is only one credit.

Another gimmick is to make deuces or jokers wild, and then entirely delete the payment for a high pair or two pairs. Whoops! And then there are copycat versions. Look closely at the two columns on the far right of the chart. They’re nearly identical except for the payout for four of a kind. The one-credit difference drops the return by nearly six percent.

Similarly, at first glance, deuces wild NSU looks like it has better payouts than full-pay deuces. But actually, NSU’s net payback is about one percent lower. By the way, NSU is short for “not so ugly.” Players have given it this moniker because it’s close enough to 100% to be a good gamble.

Comparison of Pay Tables

There are dozens of different video poker versions, each with its own pay table, and each pay table requires a unique strategy. Yikes! Wait, don’t go flipping back to the slots section. Video poker optimal strategy is easy to learn when you avoid machines with stingy pay tables, and learn to play just a few games that pay near 100 percent. I’ll show you how to do that in the next article.

For now just remember that VP optimal strategy is all about finding good pay tables. Video poker pros usually don’t play anything that pays back less than 99.5%, but I recommend 97% as a low limit for casual players. In other words, stay away from 7/5 and 6/5 J-O-B. Scrutinize bonus games carefully to be sure all the hands are full-pay.