Video Poker - How to Win and How it Works • The Jackpot Gents

Hi and welcome to our instructional. video on video poker my name is Steve Bourie and I'm the author of the American casino guide which is the number one bestselling book, in the US on the subject of casino gambling and travel and the only book that comes with more, than one thousand dollars in casino coupons if you want to know more about me or my book just go to my website at americancasinoguide.com As a gambling author I spend a. lot of time in casinos my favorite game to play is video poker it's really a good game for all levels of players and in this video I'm going to show you. how video poker machines work and how you can win on them. First of all let, me ask you this do you know the main difference between a. video poker machine a slot machine? well if you said a slot machine is a game, of luck and video poker is a game of skill then you are correct. When you play a, slot machine you put in your money and pull the handle or push that spin button and you hope that you're lucky enough to get a winning combination in video poker however it is your skill, in playing the cards that affects the outcome of the game Now besides the skill factor there is one other big difference between video poker and slot machines that I should mention and that is you, never know what percentage a slot machine is set to pay back to the public but you can always calculate a video. poker machine's pay-back percentage just by looking at its pay table This is. a very important because it allows you to go into a casino and easily tell which video poker, machines are programmed to pay back the most money So those are the two main differences between slots and video poker and I'll return to those differences, shortly but first let me give you a brief rundown on the basics of how to play. Video poker is similar to playing a game of five card poker the only difference is that you have no, opponent to beat and you can't lose more than your initial bet first you deposit from one to five coins. in the machine to make your bet you are then shown five cards on the. video screen and your goal is to try to make the best poker hand, possible from those cards since it is a draw game you're given one, opportunity to improve your hand this is done by allowing you to discard. from one up two of five cards from your original, hand Of course you don't have to discard any if you don't want to, but usually you. want to replace some cards to improve your hand After choosing which cards you want to, keep you then push the draw button and the machine will replace all of your. discards with new cards based on the resulting final hand the, machine will then pay according to the pay schedule posted on the machine naturally the better your hand the higher the amount the machine will pay you back So those are the basics of how to play. video poker but now let's go back and talk about, those two big differences between slots and video poker and how you can use that information to help you become a long-term winner at video poker. If you see my how to win. slots video on YouTube where I explain how slot machines work you know that slot machine manufacturers, have a lot of flexibility when it comes to programming their machines if they want a machine to pay back less, money to the players they simply program in more losing combinations and if they want a slot to pay back more money they just program in more winning combinations The problem, for you as a player is that when you walk up to a slot

machine you have no idea what it's programmed to pay back Fortunately when you play video poker, you won't have that problem you see with video poker machines the, manufacturers can't increase or decrease the number of winning and losing combinations they, program into the machines and the reason they can't do that is. because the number of winning and losing combinations are all based on a 52 card deck and therefore the number of those combinations are. identical on all video poker machines of course I'm not including games with jokers here but any video poker game played with a 52 card deck has exactly 2,598,960 unique five card poker hands, possible and every time you push the deal button you will be dealt one of those hands. Now you may be wondering if the manufacturers can manipulate the winning and losing combinations and how can they change the payback. percentages to make machines pay out less or more well the answer is they do that by, simply paying you less when you get a winning hand To get a. better understanding in this let's take a look at a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine On this machine the jacks or better part. refers to the fact that you won't win anything unless you have at least a pair, jacks and the 9/6 part refers to the payback schedule nine coins for a full house and six coins. for a flush this is one of the best games you can, find in a casino it is known as a full pay machine and the expected return on this machine when you play the maximum five coins and use perfect strategy is 99.54 percent. Now when a casino wants to make more money on their video poker machines they will offer a lower pay table and that. change is almost always made in the payoffs for the full house and the flush For instance on one machine you may only get paid eight coins for a full house while another may only pay seven and, another just six on the flush pay off the only change is. that they're usually reduced from six to five Every time one of these payoffs is, reduced by one coin the effect is that the payback percentage is reduced by about 1.1 percent So if you had a 7/5 jacks or better, machine that returned seven coins for a full house and five coins for a flush the expected return on that machine would be. 96.15 percent rather than the 99.54 percent on a 9/6. Jacks or Better machine As you can see it it's always a good, idea to look at the pay table at the video poker machine to make sure you're, playing the game offering the highest return Many times casinos will scatter higher-paying and lower-paying machines throughout the casino and it's up to you to spot the better. ones You need to be careful however that you are comparing the pay table on, the same type machine you can't compare a jacks or better machine to a bonus game or double bonus or double double bonus or deuces wild if you like to play jacks or better then just take a few minutes to walk to the casino and look at the pay tables on all the jacks or better machines You'll probably find some variations on the full house and flush payoffs just be sure to play on the machine, where the payoffs are the highest for those hands Remember that the probability of getting, a full house in all those jacks or better machines is the exact same so why would you want to settle for. seven coins for a full house when another machine in the same casino may offer you 8 or 9? Actually every video poker, machine's payback percentage can be mathematically calculated but it's impossible to do that on your, own You can buy a software program to do it but it'll cost anywhere from thirty

dollars to fifty dollars another option is to just go to our website, at americancasinoguide.com and visit our video poker section In that area you'll see an article called video poker pay tables just click on. that and it will bring up a list of the most, common pay tables along with the notation of the payback percentage for that particular pay table Now that you know how to find the best, machines to play you'll need some help with the strategy It turns out that video poker is similar to blackjack in a sense that there is a basic strategy and there is always one best way to play, your hand in any given situation and how is that strategy determined? Well. of course it's done with computers There are 32 different ways any five card poker hand can be played and the computer will analyze all 32 of, those plays to come up with an expected value for each play this expected value which is referred, to as EV by knowledgeable video poker players is the key to making your decisions and. the play that delivers the highest EV is how you should always play your, hand Let's say you're on a 9/6 Jacks or Better. machine and you're dealt the following hand which includes a pair of 10s and four hearts Should keep the tens or go for the flush? Well if you look at the computer. analysis for this hand you'll see that if you keep the pair, of 10s the EV of that hand is a little better than 4.1 points but if you keep the four card flush the. EV is much higher at more than 5.7 coins, so the correct. answers that you should keep the four card flush because that expected value is the highest as you see just like a machine's pay back percentage can be calculated so can the correct strategy for playing any particular hand but once again you will need to buy a, software program costing up to fifty dollars However there are also strategy charts you can buy that will show you how to play your, hands properly and those cost around five dollars Keep in mind that the strategy will, change slightly whenever the pay table is changed so you need to make sure you are using the proper strategy for each particular pay table If you want to get some video poker strategy charge for free you can do that on our website at. americancasinoguide.com just go to the video poker section and click on the article title free video poker strategy charts You can, then print out any of those charts and bring them with. you to the casino One last thing I want to mention about video poker is thatat unlike slot machines you can actually. find machines are set to return more than 100 percent and how you may ask can a casino offer a game with an expected return of more than one hundred percent? Wouldn't they lose money on that machine? Well yes they would lose money if everyone who played that machine knew the right strategy but ninety-nine point nine percent of. the people who play that game don't know how to play it properly so. they won't even come close to achieving that 100 percent return therefore the casino can still make. money on that game So there you have it hopefully I've answered most of your questions about video poker and the next time you visit a casino you'll, be able to easily choose the best paying machines and use the proper strategy Thanks for. watching and best wishes for good luck on your, next visit to the casino!