Video Poker Pay Tables

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If you play at online casinos, you’ve probably seen offerings for Video Poker. Video Poker is different from regular poker games, though, as you are trying to make a single hand of poker and are awarded money based on the hand you make. In other words, your winnings are based on the payouts set in the Video Poker pay tables.

For those new to Video Poker, you may be a little confused about what a pay table is and how it is relevant to the game. Today, we will explain the importance of a pay table in video poker and how you can use a pay table to your advantage when selecting video poker games.

Even if you don’t know perfect video poker strategy and you only make the occasional mistake, that average return will only drop down to 99.52 percent. The one thing to look for when you play video poker games is a 9/6 pay table. Games with a table of 9/6 will pay 9 to 1 if you get a full house, and 6 to 1 when you get a flush. The Not So Ugly pay table is commonly used at Vegas casinos, and is a very deceptive pay table as it appears to pay out more than full pay, but it actually doesn't. Five of a Kind, Straight Flush, and Flush all pay out more than full pay games, but four of a kind pays out less which swings the odds against you. Video Poker Pay Tables Click on one of the following games to see that game's pay table and theoretical financial return for perfect play. Anyone can play perfectly with the right focus and training tools. To understand more about how pay tables work, scroll down, or click here. On most Jacks or Better video games, the only variables on the pay table are those 2 hands. In fact, this specific pay table is called a 9/6 Jacks or Better pay table. An 8/5 Jacks or Better game has the same payouts on all the hands except those two, which pay off at 8 for 1 and 5 for 1 respectively instead. To understand a Full House Bonus video poker pay table, it’s first important to give it some context. First, let’s take a look at the pay table for Jacks or Better, which is the basis for all other video poker games. Jacks or Better Pay Table. Coins/Hands 1 coin 2 coins 3 coins 4 coins 5 coins; Royal flush: 250: 500: 750.

What are Video Poker Pay Tables?

A pay table in Video Poker is precisely as it sounds. It is a table that shows what you can win according to a bet placed. Most Video Poker pay tables contain five columns which represent the number of credits you bet in a hand. If you play two credits at a time, then column two is what you use to determine how much you win.

In each column, you can see how much you can win for each hand. Below is a pay table for Jacks or Better video poker:

For example, if you bet one credit and hit a flush, you can win six credits. Notice that the prize increases in the multiple of the coins bet. The exception is the Royal Flush which pays a jackpot prize of 800x your bet.

There are common variations to pay tables. The most common is when games pay additional hands. For example, Bonus Poker will pay a higher amount for four aces than it will for other four of a kind hands.

In a few rare cases, you may run across a machine that allows you to play more than five credits. In this case, you will have an extended pay table and the only section shown is the one relevant to your bet.

Why is a Pay Table Important

A pay table tells you how much you can win in a poker game. It is also useful in helping you to figure out your expected value from a game. First, you need to understand how Video Poker pay tables are classified.

For Video Poker, you will often hear references to Video Poker games such as 9-6, 8-5, 7-5, and similar. This is the amount that a game will pay on a full house and a flush on a single credit.

Notice in the earlier example that a full house pays nine credits on a single credit bet while a flush pays six. This would make this game a 9-6 machine. Now that you know how to read a pay table, it’s important to know what to look for.

A pay table can tell you exactly how much a Video Poker game will pay back to customers. A 9-6 machine, for instance, will back 99.54% of all money put into the machine. This is assuming that perfect pay is followed.

This percentage drops dramatically as the pay table changes. A 9-5 machine pays back 98.45% while an 8-6 machine pays back 98.39%. Similarly, you can expect a 6-5 machine to pay back only 95%, and that’s assuming perfect play. Since few players can achieve perfect play, you can expect the casino edge to be a lot greater.

In a few rare cases, you can actually find Video Poker machines that will pay more than 100% of the money collected. This includes 9-7 Jacks or Better, 10-7 Double Bonus Poker, and 10-6 Double Double Bonus.

The odds for each game varies. Therefore, it is a good idea to go somewhere like Wizard of Odds to get an idea of what pay tables to look for.

Put the Odds More Into Your Favor

Take the time to check out the Video Poker pay tables on your preferred game. Most games will have the pay table clearly displayed on the main screen. If it is not, there is usually a Pay Table button you can click or tap to display the pay table.

Note that looking at a pay table is a perfectly acceptable part of playing Video Poker. This is not like card counting in live blackjack as most casinos do not have games that pay out more than 100%. Even the rare casinos that offer the games know that it will be rare that players will be skilled enough to exploit the game.

Even if you don’t play perfect strategy, it is a good idea to pay attention to the pay tables. This will help you find machines that are more prone to pay out. This in turn will help you play longer and even catch lucky to hit that magic Royal Flush.

• Strategies
  • Jacks or Better
  • Deuces Wild
  • Quick Quads
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The $1199 payoff is amusing, just under the $1200 limit for which the casino would be obligated to report the win to the IRS. Winpoker 6 software allows for analysis of custom designed games. In this case, the return is 100.0079%.

There is a strict regulation in Nevada that each card must have the same probability of being dealt. Most other legitimate jurisdictions also follow this rule. However, not every jurisdiction is entirely legitimate. Casinos can legally change the odds by changing the pay table.

Assuming you played conventional 8/5 strategy the return in your example would be 99.68%. However, if you played optimal strategy for this jackpot the return would be 100.08%. So, Wong was not wrong.

I doubt that Casino Niagara would have the 'full pay' pay table that my Java game is based on. With little competition they can be stingy and people will still play. I'm afraid I don't have any strategies available for other pay tables. I suspect Casino Niagara offers 8/5 jacks or better, which pays 8 for a full house and 5 for a flush. Assuming perfect strategy, this has a return of 97.30%. Using perfect strategy for full pay video poker, as found on my site, on this game the return would be 97.29%. The two strategies are almost the same and you are only giving up 0.01% by using my strategy on an 8/5 machine. Also, I assume maximum coins bet because that is what the player should do. If you play less than maximum coins you will only get 250 per coin on a royal flush, causing a reduction in the rate of return of 1.36%.

I am very confident that any respectable maker of video poker machines makes them fair and accurate. Is it possible there are dishonest machines or chips out there? Sure. I would be interested to read the article you refer to.

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, the probability of a three of a kind depends on the pay table, which affects player strategy. My video poker program always makes the optimal play for every hand by looping through all the possible cards on the draw. However, creating a strategy in writing is very time consuming.

I assume by '10/7' you mean double bonus. As my video poker cheat sheet shows, the return for that game, with five coins bet, is 100.17%. However, if $5 is too rich for your blood, then you can use my video poker analyzer to get the return for a one-coin bet. Just put in 250 per coin bet for a royal flush. The calculator defaults to 4,000, so change it to 1,250. Press 'analyze' and you'll see the return is 99.11%.
So, you're much better off playing five quarters in 9-6 Jacks or Better.

Jacks or better
Royal 500
St8 flush 50
4 of kind 25
Full Hse 10
Flush 6
Straight 4
Thee Kind 3
two pair 2
Jacks + 1

Aces and Eights
Royal Fl 500
Str Flus 50
4 Ace/8s 80
4 7s 50
Four knd 25
Full Hse 8
Flush 5
Straight 4
3 Kind 3
Two Pair 2
Jacks+ 1

Deuces Wild Poker
Royal Flush 500
4 Deuces 200
Wild Royal 25
5 of Kind 16
St8 Flush 10
Four Kind 4
Full House 4
Flush 3
Straight 2
Three Kind 1

Joker Poker (1 Joker)
Royal Flush 500
Wild Royal 100
5 of a Kind 50
Straight Fl 25
Four Kind 8
Full Hse 5
Flush 4
Straight 3
Three Kind 2
Two Pair 1

Tens or better Poker
Royal Flush 500
Straight Fl 50
4 of a Kind 25
Full House 10
Flush 6
Straight 4
3 of a Kind 3
Two Pair 2
Tens+ 1

Again all of these have no bonuses for max coins in Royal Flush. Is that enough to hurt these pay tables, or are they playable? (they seem decent at least) Thank you in advance Micheal.

Here are the returns based on optimal strategy:

Jacks or Better: 100.03%
Aces and Eights: 99.07%
Deuces Wild: 99.05%
Joker Poker: 70.23%
Tens or Better: 104.13%!

I would verify that Tens or Better pay table and if you wrote it down correctly then play it hard.

There is a simple formula for this answer. It the initial investment divided by the house edge. In this case the answer is $100/0.02 = $5000. However due to the volatility of video poker, most of the time the $100 won’t last this long.

Play Video Poker Pay Tables

Generally speaking 50 and 100 play machines have lousy pay tables and thus should be avoided. However assuming you did find a decent pay table ask yourself what you would play on single play and then divide that by 50 or 100. For example if you play the $1 single line machines then you should play 2 cent 50 line or 1 cent 100 line games.

That is what happens in an environment with almost no competition. Asking the casino for better machines won’t help. If players will play games with lousy pay tables why should they change anything? Your only hope is to write to the lawmakers in Connecticut and ask them to end the two-casino monopoly on gaming in that state and allow others to compete.

Any legitimate game maker has the double up feature as a truly fair bet with a 100% return. So you have a 50/50 chance of winning any given bet (not counting ties) regardless of the amount bet or the results of past bets.

Each denomination can be set to its own payback percentage. On many IGT machines you can tell if they change the return percentage by whether or not the symbols on the screen change when you change the denomination.

Video Poker Pay Tables Wizard Of Odds

Often with progressives part of each dollar bet goes to seeding the next meter. This way when somebody pops the jackpot the next meter does not start at a small amount but the secondary meter has already grown to a respectable amount. The percentage devoted to the second meter is not necessarily constant but sometimes increases as the primary meter grows. Not that you asked, but in some games like those at Be the Dealer there is a different jackpot for each coinage, and each jackpot is proportional to the coinage. The way I think they do that is what I call a 'super meter' that all coinages contribute to. Then each specific coinage gets a share of the super meter in proportion to that coinage divided by the sum of all coinages. For example if they had a progressive video poker game in coinages of 5 cents, 25 cents, $1, and $5 and the super meter had $100,000 then the $1 game meter would have (1/6.75)*100,000 = $14,814.81.

Most machines I’ve seen that tell you what to hold do use the proper strategy, but the better the paytable, the less likely the machine will be to offer advice in the first place. And I’ve never seen a machine with a positive expectation that told you what cards to hold.

As for the accuracy of the advice -- Microgaming Internet casinos do follow optimal video poker strategy. However I’ve played some machines at a racetrack in Delaware that advised the player on which cards to hold, and the advice was clearly incorrect.

Video Poker Pay Tables Calculator

You make a good point. Tipping definitely does add to house advantage in table games. If one were to tip one bet until every 100 hands that would add 1% to the house edge. Slot and video poker players also get comped and in general treated much better. These are things to consider when deciding which game to devote your time to.

[Bluejay adds: When you consider tips, video poker can lose less per hour than table games but only slightly, while slot machines remain a money-sucker. Consider 99%-return $0.25 video poker at 500 hands an hour, which is $6.25/hr. in expected losses. This compares favorably to blackjack with an hourly loss is 0.5% edge x 100 hands x $5 = $2.50, + $5/hr. tips = $7.50/hr. A typical quarter slot machine loses more than twice that per hour.]

Yes, I take notes in the casino all the time. The only time I have had trouble was when the Suncoast prohibited me from playing slots and writing at the same time when I was taking notes for my Las Vegas slot machine survey. Camera usage seems to be much more tolerated lately, so lately I have been taking pictures of rule screens and pay tables when I have my camera available. I also usually have cheat sheets in my possession when playing video poker, in case I run across a hand I don't know how to play, which is rare. I keep the cheat sheets hidden but have never had a problem whipping them out in a pinch. The reason you don't see other players with cheat sheets is about 99.54% of video poker players don't know what they are doing and the rest have the strategy memorized.

The same can be said about standard video poker, once a card is discarded it can not come back on the draw. Thus the expected return in Spin Poker is the same as conventional video poker with the same pay table.

Video Poker Payout

Assuming no strategy changes for every extra 100 coins in the jackpot the return goes up by 0.044%. So the return with a 4400 coin jackpot would be 100.762% + 4*0.044% = 100.939%.

Best Video Poker Pay Tables

No. Neither the amount you put in nor the denomination affects the odds. The same is true of slots.

In games like Bonus Poker and Double Bonus I assume they pay more for certain four of a kinds to give the player a better chance at a big win, at the cost of smaller small wins of course. It makes sense to have four aces as the premium four of a kind, because aces are the highest card in regular poker. The reason I think that four twos pays more than four kings is because players don’t hold low cards as often, and thus four twos comes up less often than four kings. So although the probability of each card is the same, player behavior causes less of the low four of a kinds, thus it makes it easier for the game maker to pay more for the low four of a kinds.

If a royal flush paid the same as a straight flush then 9/6 Jacks or Better would have a return of 98.03%.

Good question. In 9/6 jacks or better the probability of a royal flush is 22.65% of that of a straight flush, but a royal pays 16 times more. Overall the straight flush only contributes 0.55% to the return of the game. The straight flush is the Rodney Dangerfield of most forms of video poker, it gets no respect. I can only speculate that game makers wanted a big top prize. Nobody likes to come in second, so perhaps that is why the original game makers didn’t pay the straight flush much by comparison.

If you want to be a perfectionist, yes. Let’s look at full pay deuces wild, for example. Normally the return is 1.00762 and a royal hits once every 45282 hands. That makes the expected profit 45282 × (1.00762 - 1) = 345.05 bet units. For a greater overall expected profit, I recommend using a less aggressive royal strategy to increase the total hands played.
In this case, the profit is maximized by following a strategy based on a royal win of 450. That will lower the actual return to 1.007534 and decrease the royal probability to 1 in 46415, resulting in an expected profit of 46415 ×(1.007534-1) = 349.68. The extra 4.6 bet units may not be worth the bother of learning a different strategy.
To find the optimal target royal value, you can use my video poker calculator, and keep lowering the pay for a royal until the overall return gets as close to 1 as possible. At that point, it is like playing for free until you hit the royal, at which point you get a bonus for the royal. In the full pay deuces wild example, the bonus is 800-450=350.
The situation is not entirely hypothetical. Slot managers have been known to prohibit advantage players from playing video poker, and usually such players get the tap on the shoulder shortly after hitting a royal.

• 6-5 Bonus Poker progressive.
• 2% meter rise on royal flush.
• 5-coin game.

Now assume the following about me.

• Minimum return to play of 100.5%.
• I’m capable of playing a progressive until it hits.
• I know perfect 6-5 Bonus Poker strategy for a 4000-coin royal.

What is the least the jackpot should be for me to play?

7,281.8 coins. It is interesting to note that if you played only once at exactly that meter then the return would be 98.5% only. The reason you should play at that point is because of the assumption you are capable of playing until you pop the jackpot. That is like having a 2% cash back slot club. 98.5% + 2% = 100.5%.

I might add that if you start playing 4000-coin jackpot strategy at exactly a 7,281.8 jackpot, you can expect to profit 201.18 bets. However, if you took the time to learn the strategy changes for a 7,281.8 coin jackpot, then your expected profit would be 234.31 coins.

On a related note, I just finished reading The Secret World of Video Poker Progressives by Frank Kneeland. This book has lots of formulas for much more complicated progressive situations, as well as practical advice and stories based on his years running a team of progressive hunters. I recommend it for advantage progressive video poker players.