When you are playing video poker at a land based casino it is quite easy to
find the pay tables. These pay tables are generally displayed right there on the
machine. If you know your video poker odds then you will be able to tell which
machines are full pay video poker and which are short pay machines.
When it comes to online casinos, the pay tables are not as visible. This may
be a generalization as there are online casinos that display their pay tables
quite prominently. If you cannot see the pay table then you have to look harder
on the site - it will be somewhere in the video poker section.
If online casinos are offering full pay video poker then they usually
advertise this because this is a major draw card. You just have to know what to
look for. Using Jacks or Better as an example, a full pay video poker machine
will pay out 9/6 - this means that it pays 9:1 for a Full House and 6:1 for a
Flush.
If we take a standard 52 card deck - no Wild cards -then there are 2,598,960
possible 5 card combinations that you can get. Video poker machines have random
card hand generators that are used to simulate real playing conditions using the
probability of which hands will come up. This is how an online casino can manage
its house edge and know how much will be paid out according to profits. The only
advantage you have as an online gambler is knowing how to read a pay table so
that you know you are getting the best odds possible.
This is a sample of three different video poker machines. Machine 1 is full
pay. The other two are not.
|
|
Machine 1 |
Machine 2 |
Machine 3 |
| Hand |
Payout |
Payout |
Payout |
| Royal
Flush |
250 |
250 |
250 |
| Straight
Flush |
50 |
50 |
50 |
| Four of a
Kind |
25 |
25 |
25 |
| Full
House |
9 |
8 |
6 |
|
Flush |
6 |
5 |
5 |
| Straight |
4 |
4 |
4 |
| Three of a
Kind |
3 |
4 |
3 |
| Two Pair |
2 |
2 |
2 |
| Jacks |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Machine Return |
99.54% |
97.30% |
95.00% |
If you look at the above table, you will see that they are almost identical
except for the Full House payout and the Straight Payout. You may not think that
there is a huge difference, but if you look at the returns you are getting then
you will see that there is almost a 5% significance between Machine 1 and
Machine 3.
You need to know how to read these tables so that you get maximum return on
your video poker. Online casinos already have an edge so you need to look for
the smallest gap. This takes just a few extra minutes once you know what you are
looking for and can make your game much more profitable in the long run.
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