Video poker
Video poker is the one machine in the casino that shows you its price. The pay table on the glass, plus the fact that the cards come from a fair deck, tells you exactly what the game returns. Most players never read it, and the casino counts on that.
A deck you can count on
A slot machine's return is hidden inside its program. Video poker is different, because it deals from a 52-card deck and the deck has to behave like a real one. In Nevada that's written into the rules: Regulation 14.040 says a machine that represents a live game must give each card the same chance it would have in the live game, or tell the player where it doesn't. Other states set their own rules, so what applies to you depends on where you play.
Once the cards are fair, the only thing that decides the return is the pay table. And the pay table is printed on the front of the machine. That's as close as a casino gets to posting its hold on the wall.
Reading the pay table
The game most people learn on is Jacks or Better. You're dealt five cards, you hold what you want, you draw replacements, and you're paid on the final hand. A pair of jacks or better gets your bet back, and everything above pays more.
Here are two versions you'll find side by side, often in the same bank of machines, with the payout per coin bet.
| Hand | 9/6 machine | 8/5 machine |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 800 | 800 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 50 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 25 |
| Full house | 9 | 8 |
| Flush | 6 | 5 |
| Straight | 4 | 4 |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 3 |
| Two pair | 2 | 2 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 1 |
| Return with perfect play | 99.54% | 97.30% |
Players name the machines after the full house and flush lines, which is the only place they differ. One unit less on each and the return drops by 2.24 points. The returns are from Wizard of Odds' analysis of Jacks or Better, worked out over every possible deal and draw.
Put that in a bettor's terms. The 9/6 machine holds 0.46 percent, which is cheaper than the pass line in craps. The 8/5 machine holds 2.70 percent, about what a single-zero roulette wheel holds. Same game, same screen, same cards, and one costs six times what the other does. If a casino only has 8/5 and worse, I'd play something else or play somewhere else.
So the first habit is simple. Before you put money in, read the full house and flush lines. Other games (Double Bonus, Deuces Wild and the rest) have their own tables and their own "full pay" versions, and the same rule holds: the table is the price.
Perfect play is a condition
That 99.54 percent assumes you make the right hold on every hand. Video poker has a skill element, and every mistake hands some of it back. Holding a kicker with a pair, keeping three to a flush over a low pair, breaking up a made straight to chase a royal when you shouldn't: each of those costs a little, and a player who plays by feel can easily give back more than the gap between the two machines above.
You don't need to memorize every case. Wizard of Odds publishes a simplified strategy for 9/6 that it says returns 99.46 percent, within a tenth of a point of perfect. I'd carry a strategy card and look at it when a hand is close. It's the closest thing in the building to knowing the line before the book does.
The royal flush
The royal is 800 for 1 on the table above, and it's rare. Wizard of Odds puts it at about 1 in 40,391 hands on 9/6 with best play. Multiply the two and the royal is worth about 1.98 points of the 99.54. Take it out, and the rest of the table returns roughly 97.6 percent.
That has two consequences. The first is that most of the time you're playing a game that holds more than its headline number, waiting on a hand that comes along every forty thousand deals. At five quarters a hand, that is about $50,000 put through the machine for each royal, on average, and averages hide long droughts. A session that never sees a royal (and most never do) runs closer to the 97.6 than the 99.5.
The second is that the 800 usually depends on playing the full number of coins. On many machines the royal pays far less per coin below the maximum bet, and the pay table on the glass will show you by how much. If the machine's maximum is more than you want to bet, drop a denomination rather than short the coins.
How close is close
A game that returns 99.54 percent still loses. You put $100,000 through a quarter machine faster than you'd think, and at a 0.46 percent hold the expected cost of that is $460. With mistakes, more. With a few points off the pay table, a lot more. Casinos know almost nobody plays perfectly, which is why they can afford to keep a few full-pay machines on the floor at all.
Comps and slot-club cashback can tip a full-pay game past 100 percent on paper. I'd count that as a discount, not a business plan, and I'd read the club's terms before I trusted it. The general picture of what each game in the building costs is in house edge and RTP, and the progressive versions of these machines are covered in jackpots.
Set the session budget before you sit down, the same as at a table. Video poker is quick and quiet, and that combination is how people lose track. Responsible gambling has how I'd do it.