Video poker is unusual on a casino floor in two ways. The machine tells you its pay table before you insert money, and your decisions change what it returns. A full-pay Jacks or Better machine played correctly returns about 99.5%, which is better than almost anything else in the building.
Both halves have to be right. A perfect player on a bad machine loses more than a mediocre player on a good one.
Start here
- Reading a pay table — two rows on the screen separate a 99.54% machine from a 97.30% one.
- Hold decisions — the exact value of every choice on the hands players get wrong.
- Four to a royal — why correct play breaks a made flush, and by how much.
- Dealt hand odds — what you actually get dealt, counted across all 2,598,960 hands.
The three rules that matter most
Read the full house and flush rows. They are the two numbers casinos change, and they move the return by more than two percentage points.
Always bet maximum coins. The royal flush pays 800 per coin at full bet and 250 below it. Playing fewer coins on a higher denomination is better than playing fewer coins.
Hold four to a royal over anything but a royal. It is the single highest-value rule in the game and the one most players will not follow, because it means throwing away a made flush.
How this section is built
Hold values and hand frequencies here come from full enumeration: all 2,598,960 five-card deals, and every possible draw from the 47 cards left. Nothing is sampled.
Full-game return percentages such as 99.54% are the exception, and they are attributed rather than derived, because computing them from scratch means evaluating every hold for every deal. Where a figure is borrowed, the page says so.
For comparison across the floor, our blackjack rules, craps bets and roulette bets sections price those games the same way.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is video poker better than slots?
- Yes, substantially. A full-pay Jacks or Better machine returns about 99.5% with correct play; slot returns are typically 88% to 95% and are not disclosed.
- Does skill really matter?
- Yes. The gap between correct and casual play on the same machine is worth several percentage points of return.
- What is the best video poker machine?
- Among common games, 9/6 Jacks or Better at about 99.54% return with perfect play.
- How often is a royal flush dealt?
- Four times in 2,598,960 deals, or once in 649,740. Most royals arrive on the draw, not the deal.
Hold values and hand frequencies on this page are computed by full enumeration: every one of the 2,598,960 five-card deals, and every possible draw from the 47 remaining cards. The evaluator is checked against published hand counts before any page is generated. Full-game return percentages such as 99.54% come from published optimal-play analyses and are attributed rather than derived here, because deriving them requires evaluating every hold for every deal. Pay tables vary by machine, so read the screen.