Tips and Strategies for Video Poker
Video poker is a very popular game to play in the casino or online. It’s basically a skill based slot machine. The house edge on video poker is usually much lower than on most slot machines, but in order to take advantage of this, you need to at least learn the basics! If you have played some version of poker in your life, then you have the beginnings of some VP knowledge. My biggest tip for this article is that you DO NOT start playing video poker without knowing the basic hands and basic playing strategy. Otherwise, you will wipe out any advantages you are getting over playing slots.
Video Poker Hand Rankings
As I mentioned, if you have played any form of poker, then you already know this information. But for the very beginner, here are the hand rankings in video poker from highest to lowest:
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- Four of a Kind or Quads
- Full House
- Flush
- Straight
- Three of a Kind
- Two Pair
- One Pair
Video Poker Basics
Now that you know the basic hand rankings, you can start to learn the game. Let’s start with a basic single-line game of video poker. You sit down at a machine, add your money, and press Deal. The machine will deal you five cards. If you are lucky enough to be dealt a winning hand, you then Hold all 5 cards and press Deal again or Draw, and the machine pays you your winnings. If you do not yet have a winning hand, you can hold the best cards and Draw to hopefully fill in a winning hand. This is where things get tricky, and that is knowing which cards have the best value to hold in order to make the best winning hand you can.
Practice Sites and Apps
My suggestion is to use either an online practice site or a phone app in order to practice, practice, practice before you play for any real money. The site I like to use is VideoPoker.com. This site has versions of most of the game variations that are currently available in casinos. You can go there and play for free (although you will need to watch ads from time to time). There are also very affordable paid options that let you practice without ads, and also a version that will teach you and tell you when you are making a mistake. These tutorial sessions are well worth the monthly or yearly fees.
Another site that has a ton of information on video poker games, strategy, and more is The Wizard of Odds website. Here you can also practice video poker, look up the best strategy for a particular hand, and much more. I highly recommend a look through this website for anyone wanting to learn video poker!
You can also download an app to play on your phone and practice anytime anywhere. A few that I have used is Play Perfect VP. This app has a basic version for free, and a bit more advanced version that will cost a few dollars. Another great app that you can use while you are playing to look up a hand that you are not sure about, Video Poker Best Hold. Both of these apps are super helpful when you are just learning.
Variety of Video Poker Games
Once you learn the basic game, you can then move on to choosing different versions of paytables. Depending on which game you choose, different hands will pay different amounts of coins. The two most basic versions are Jacks or Better and Bonus Poker. These games are very similar, so if you learn the strategy for Jacks or Better you can easily switch to playing Bonus Poker using that same strategy. Beyond those two games, there are also Double Double Bonus, Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, and many more. However, I would suggest starting out with a basic game before trying to advance to any of the others, as every variation has a different strategy that must be learned to play an optimal game.
Once you have mastered one of these games, you can play on a machine that lets you play 3, 5, 10, or even 100 games at once! You get dealt on hand, you hold the best cards, and you then have 3, 5, 10, or even 100 chances to improve on that hand.
Beyond these basic games, there are also many, many fun variations of video poker games. Many of these have their own strategy that needs to be learned, so we will leave this to a more advanced lesson for another day. You can watch me play many of these games on my YouTube Channel. And if you would like to learn to play some of these other video poker variations, I have a playlist of Tutorials that you can watch:
