When it comes to house poker, you are playing against the hands of other players and have to bluff well or fold if the hand you have isn’t ideal – and often, you won’t know how well or poorly you’re doing until quite far into the game – by which point you’ll likely have lost far more than you bargained for.

With video poker, the fundamentals to note are that your end payout is based on the poker hand you have, and with wild cards aplenty around to help you out, you have an advantage against online casinos that few games offer. Often comparable to blackjack, if you have the right strategy, you can often win big as you whittle away the house edge and, while most players will win with a hand as simple as a pair of jacks, many players will often get lucky with a hand like a royal flush, that most online casinos will provide a payout of around 800 to 1.

Video Poker Basics

A popular game since the first video poker machine came out in 1970, very little has changed regarding how the game is played online. In video poker, you are dealt a hand and can choose to draw or stay.

If you choose to draw, depending on the online video poker game you’re playing, you can begin to calculate your odds – such as if you’re playing jacks or better, what your odds are of getting the final card you need to complete your hand or suit. You then place your bet, choose to draw or stay, and can get into a good rhythm of placing bets, based on how likely you are to get the cards you need as you push ‘draw’. The online casino will then calculate your winnings should your hand net you some.

Simple Strategies

As most online video poker games work off a standard 5 card draw version of poker, a Jacks or Better gameplay is the most common one found. This ensures that there are no other players hands to beat – nor is there a dealers hand to beat. Instead, the player needs to match the paytable requirements to win – which is quite easy to do over the long run since the game relies on players reaching a hand holding 2 jacks, or better.

Most online casinos who offer video poker iterations will only pay out for the value of the highest hand you hold, be it a royal flush or a pair of threes, and your other cards won’t count towards your winnings. This reason alone is why many online poker players look for strategy cards that show the potential outcome of the hand of cards that they have been dealt.

These kind of strategy cards are far easier to use when playing online video poker, when compared to a video poker machine, and will guide players as to which bets they should make. Strategy cards give advice such as always take a low pair, over a single high card like a queen – or to break up a pair of jacks or better if you have 4 cards that will lead to a royal flush or if you have 4 cards that will lead to a lower straight flush.

For those who find regular online video poker is not quite their thing, there are other game variants around such as Deuces Wild, which is a poker variation that sees all the 2 cards in the deck becoming wild cards – which ups the odds of players being able to complete hands faster than in other poker variations. Especially since the lowest paying hand for Deuces Wild is 3 of a kind, which gives players the odds of achieving this hand 28.5% of the time.