| Video Poker vs. Draw Poker »
Video Poker Basics
Although video poker was introduced in the 1970s, these games didn’t get popular until the 1980s. By the 1990s, many slot players realized that video poker had become the most liberal type of slot game on the casino floors. Consequently, its popularity surged until it became a major segment of the slot machine business.
Video poker is a machine version of a popular form of poker called five-card draw or, more simply, draw poker. In the most common version of video poker, a five-card hand is randomly dealt by the machine. The player then gets to discard any or all of the cards in the dealt hand, which are replaced by new ones. Choosing which cards to hold and which to discard to maximize the payback requires correct playing strategy. There are a number of game variations, but almost all of them are based on a one-time replacement of any of the cards in a five-card hand.
It is easy to find standard video poker machines that pay back more than 98 percent and some that pay back more than 100 percent when perfect playing strategy is applied. Whereas the payback of any particular traditional slot machine is a mystery, this is not true of video poker. Every video poker machine has its complete payout schedule posted on the video screen or on the glass display above the screen. Using this information, the overall payback of that machine can be computed.
To take full advantage of the potentially high payback in video poker requires two important actions. The first is finding a video poker machine with a payout schedule that provides a high payback. The second is using the best strategy when playing that machine. It is the purpose of this post to
provide the information needed for a player to do both in a simple and effective manner.
