Video poker is a
casino game that has much in common with slot machines, but it
is a slot machine game combined with the rules of five card draw
poker in a very specific manner. Video poker is often considered
by many experienced gamblers to be vastly superior to slot
machines because of the effect that skilled play has on the
potential payback of the machine. While slot machines are
programmed to pay back a certain percentage of the money that is
fed into the machine, video poker pays back a percentage that
can be affected by perfect strategic play. Video poker games
first appeared in the 1970's, but didn't start enjoying
widespread popularity until the 1980's, when slot machine
manufacturer IGT became involved in the production of video
poker games. Many people in casinos who are nervous or
intimidated by table games find video poker to be a lot more
"friendly" than blackjack or live poker. This is probably
because video poker combines the strategic thinking of a table
game like blackjack with the solitary playing experience of a
slot machine. Video poker games are easily played. The player
wages 1 or more coins in order to get dealt five virtual cards
on a computer screen. (A smart player always plays the max bet,
usually 5 coins, since the max bet triggers the bigger payoffs
on the higher ranked hands.) The player chooses which cards to
hold and then draws cards to replace his discarded cards. The
final hand pays out based on the payout table for the particular
video game. Popular video poker games include deuces wild and ja
cks or better, both of which are often played either as
single hands or in a multi-hand version, where the player gets
to play 3, 5, 10, 50 or even 100 hands of video poker at the
same time. Depending on the payout schedule for the different
poker hands on a certain machine, the payback percentage on a
video poker can be very good indeed. Jacks or better with a
"full pay", or the highest standard payback schedule, pays back
at 99.5% with perfect play. A full pay deuces wild machine pays
back at 100.7% with perfect play. In actual practice, players
who don't play perfectly and make mistakes reduce the practical
payback percentage on those machines by 6% or more, making video
poker one of the most profitable games in the casino, especially
since many video poker players play upwards of 500 hands per
hour. Learning how
to play video poker with perfect strategy is not terribly
hard to do. There are numerous video poker strategy guides
available for sale, and Bob Dancer's excellent tutorials and
software teach video poker strategy through a series of both
charts and lists of principles that will work effectively for
different learning styles. Practicing has become much easier
also, now that free
video poker games have become so prevalent online. Games
like these allow you to play online with no download and no
cost, and they're played using the same rules as the video poker
games found in traditional land-based casinos.
About the author:
The author has been playing
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