Video Poker
It looks like a slot machine and it is nothing like one. Video poker is a solved game with a published pay table, which makes it the only machine in the building you can beat the math on — if the glass says the right numbers.
By The Lucky's Desk · Published · Updated
How the game works
Five cards are dealt from a standard 52-card deck. You choose which to hold. The discards are replaced from the remainder of that same deck, and the final hand is paid according to the table printed on the machine. That is the whole game.
Because the deck is a real deck and the pay table is public, the exact return of every possible hold is computable. There are 2,598,960 possible deals and 32 ways to hold each one; a computer can evaluate all of them, which means video poker has a provably correct answer for every hand you will ever be dealt.
Always play five coins. The royal flush pays 250 per coin on one through four coins and 800 per coin on five. That single jump is worth about 1.4% of total return, and playing four coins to "stretch the bankroll" is the most expensive habit in video poker.
The pay table is the game
Two machines can look identical, run the same animation and differ by more than two percent in return. The difference lives in two rows: the full house and the flush. A machine paying 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush is "9/6" — full pay. One paying 8/5 is a different, worse game wearing the same cabinet.
| Hand | 9/6 (full pay) | 8/5 (short pay) |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 800 | 800 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 50 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 25 |
| Full house | 9 | 8 |
| Flush | 6 | 5 |
| Straight | 4 | 4 |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 3 |
| Two pair | 2 | 2 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 1 |
| Optimal return | 99.54% | 97.30% |
Two rows, 2.24% of return. That is larger than the entire house edge of blackjack, craps and baccarat combined. Lucky's deals 9/6.
A hold decision, worked through
You are dealt: king of hearts, queen of hearts, jack of hearts, ten of hearts, three of clubs.
Four to a royal flush, and also a made straight if you count the ten through king as... no, it is not — you need an ace or a nine to complete that straight, and you have neither. But suppose the three of clubs were the nine of clubs. Now you hold a made straight worth 4 coins per coin bet, and four cards to a royal flush.
Which do you keep? Break up the straight. Holding four to the royal gives you one card of 47 to make it — a 2.13% shot at 800 per coin — plus outs to a flush, a straight and high pairs from the same draw. The expected value of holding four to the royal is roughly 18.7 coins per five-coin bet. Standing pat on the straight returns exactly 20 coins.
So on that specific hand, keep the straight — barely. Change it so the straight is not made and holding four to the royal is overwhelmingly correct. This is the texture of video poker: near-identical hands with opposite answers, decided by fractions of a coin.
Back to the original hand, with the three of clubs: hold the four hearts to the royal, discard the three, and accept that you will make the royal about once in every 47 attempts.
A short strategy ladder
Full optimal strategy runs to dozens of ranked hand classes. This abbreviated ladder captures most of the value — hold the highest item on the list that your five cards contain:
- Made royal flush, straight flush, or four of a kind
- Four to a royal flush
- Made full house, flush, or straight
- Three of a kind
- Four to a straight flush
- Two pair
- High pair (jacks or better)
- Three to a royal flush
- Four to a flush
- Low pair (tens or lower)
- Four to an open-ended straight
- Two suited high cards
- Three to a straight flush
- Two unsuited high cards (keep the lowest two)
- One high card
- Discard all five
Note item 10: a low pair beats four to an open-ended straight. Players almost always get that one backwards, because the straight feels closer.
The mistakes that cost the most
- Playing fewer than five coins. Costs roughly 1.4% of return, permanently.
- Not reading the glass. Sitting at an 8/5 machine throws away more than two percent before you touch a button.
- Breaking a low pair to chase. A low pair is a real asset; it makes trips, full houses and quads.
- Holding a kicker with a pair. Keeping an ace alongside a pair of sevens strictly reduces your outs. Hold the pair and nothing else.
Why 99.54% still is not free money
A 0.46% edge sounds like an invitation. The catch is where the return lives: about 2% of the total return of 9/6 Jacks or Better comes from the royal flush alone, and the royal arrives roughly once every 40,000 hands. Remove it and the game returns about 97.5%.
Practically, that means most sessions lose steadily and the theoretical return only materialises if you are still playing when a royal lands. It is a low-edge game with high variance in the tail — the opposite of the smooth grind the percentage implies.
How our machines differ from a real casino
Our deck is a genuine 52-card deck, shuffled fresh each hand, with no weighting of any kind — video poker is the one machine on the floor where the outcome is decided entirely by cards. We deal 9/6 Jacks or Better exclusively, so the pay table on the glass is always the good one. What differs is the surrounding pressure: video poker is quiet and slow, which makes it the safest machine in the building for a player who needs their Suspicion meter to cool off while still making money.
Common questions
Is video poker better than slots?
Substantially. 99.54% against 88–94%, and the outcome depends on your decisions rather than a weighting table you cannot see.
Does the machine change cards based on what I hold?
No. The replacement cards come from the same shuffled deck regardless of your choice.
Should I ever discard all five?
Yes — with no pair, no high card, and nothing three to a royal or straight flush, redraw everything.
How often does a royal flush come?
About once per 40,000 hands with optimal play. At 600 hands an hour that is roughly 66 hours of play.
See how 99.54% ranks across the floor on the house edge page.