Video poker technically is not a traditional poker game, the reason is that video poker player does not play his hand against other player's hand. In other words it is a form of poker without an opponent. This game is a simplified draw poker. A video poker player is dealt five cards with an option to exchange any number of the cards from one to all in order to make a poker hand that pays. The minimum paying hand is a pair of jacks. The payout structure is used for all paying hands.
The house advantage in the game with a full-pay schedule is similar to Blackjack - about 0.5%. Wagering on video poker usually it is possible to play for very low stakes, 5 or 10 cents. Also, at some online casinos they have multiple hands options, even as many as up to 50 hands simultaneously. However on a short bank there is much less variance on a multiple-line game than would be on a single-line game. Wagering speed on a ten-line 5 cents game would be the same as to single-line 50 cents game, but the player would be able to dramatically smooth fluctuations with the ten-lines game, because there would be more chances to hit of the higher paying hands.
To estimate the house advantage, we have to look at the pay table for the game. Each game has a pay table that is considered full pay. Any variations of the standard full-pay chart make the game a short pay game. Because of the much higher the house advantage in the short pay game, we have no interest to play this variations.
The payouts of the various hands are displayed on the pay table chart. And again, you must play 5 coins in order to get the full payout on a Royal flush. So on 5 cents machine, you will bet 25 cents per hand, and on 25 cents machine, you will bet $1.25 per hand.
So, this is the Jacks or Better pay table we are looking for:
The rule is DO NOT PLAY Jacks or Better with any other pay table. If the one coin pay table is not full pay, but the five coin pay table is full pay, then play the game ONLY with five coins per bet. Be aware that for some online casinos it is a common trick to increase the payouts on a few rare hands, while decreasing the payouts on more common hands. For that reason the house advantage could be up to 3% and of course that is completely unacceptable.
The Jacks or Better strategy
Comparing with Blackjack the video poker strategies are more complicated, complex, and difficult to memorize and obviously difficult to use them. The reason of its complicity is that the comprehensive Jacks or Better strategies cover every possible combination of the cards. However, with the simplified user-friendly strategy the house advantage over the player is just a little bit more than 0.5%.
Jacks or Better strategy ►►►
