Online Video Poker Strategy Guide: Quick Tips, Charts, and More

Video poker comes in a variety of formats, so there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all strategy. Therefore, for the purposes of this guide, I’m going to provide some general tips and advice.

After that, I’ll focus on the most popular variant, Jacks or Better, and discuss the best strategies.

Finally, I’ll draw some general conclusions from the Jacks or Better strategy section so you can apply your newfound knowledge to other types of video poker. If that sounds good, let’s get started with some basic video poker strategy tips.

Video Poker Tips and Tricks

Execution is crucial when it comes to video poker strategy. Basically, you need to get the little things right if you want the big things to work.

Here are three quick video poker tips you can use to improve your game instantly:

1. Find the Right Games: Use the video poker odds table at the end of this guide to find games with the best theoretical return rates (RTP). Your long-term expected value (i.e., what you can expect to win/lose) depends on a game’s RTP. So, video poker games with higher RTP values are the best ones to play.

2. Size Your Bets Correctly: Every bet you make should represent a small percentage of your bankroll. Play conservatively, and you’ll give yourself the best chance of riding the natural ups and downs of video poker.

3. Learn Your Outs: Video poker is a game of holding and drawing cards. Knowing the odds of making a hand gives you a better idea of how likely/unlikely they are to hit based on your current hand. The video poker odds you need are listed in the next section.

Video Poker Odds

I can’t list the odds for every possible scenario because there are too many to cover.

What I can do, though, is give you the odds (and the associated probability) of hitting each hand with your first five cards. This will give you an idea of how hard it is to make these hands.

The Best Video Poker Strategies

I’ll use Jacks or Better as the basis for my video poker strategy discussion because it’s the most popular variant, and it can be easily found at any video poker casino.

Before I give you the best video poker strategy for beginners, I need to talk briefly about RTP values. Return to Player (RTP) refers to your theoretical long-term return.

That’s the amount you can expect to get back, in theory, over an infinite number of games. So, let’s say you can successfully implement a simple video poker strategy and achieve a 99.46% RTP; you’ll get back (in theory) $99.46 for every $100.

This is a long-term expected return. Your actual return rate in a single session could be higher or lower. For example, you could wager $100 and win $182. Over time, however, the numbers dictate that the sum of your results will move towards the RTP.

Therefore, as a video poker player, your job is to make moves that give you the best RTP. Now that’s clear, let’s get into the best video poker strategies for beginners.

Jacks or Better Video Poker Strategy for Beginners

The RTP for the video poker strategy I’m about to explain is 99.46%. That’s a decent RTP, and it’s easily achievable because you only need to perform the best move according to a predefined hierarchy.

You do this by following two simple steps:

• Step 1: You look at your first five cards and note down all the possible hands you could make by holding/drawing.

• Step 2: You look through the video poker strategy chart (below) and pick the highest-ranked move.

Before I walk you through an example, here’s a simple video poker strategy chart for Jacks or Better. The chart shows you the move to make (i.e., the hand/s you can play for) based on the cards in your starting hand.

Each move is ranked, with number #1 being the best. Therefore, if you’ve got a choice between three or four moves, you always choose the one with the highest rank.

Simple Video Poker Strategy Chart

Here’s an example of how to use a simple video poker strategy chart:

• Your starting hand = J♣ Q♣ 10♥ K♣ 2♠

You could try to make the following hands in this scenario:

There are a lot of options with this starting hand, but as I’ve said, the goal is to choose the best one. That means you start at the top of the hierarchy and work your way down until you hit one of the possible hands you’ve listed.

So, if we refer back to our video poker strategy chart, you’ll see that playing for a high pair is our best option. This means we should hold the king and the queen.

Even though we have a decent chance of making a straight, a flush, and a straight flush, our chart tells us it’s better to play for a high pair because it has a better long-term expectation. A better long-term expectation means it gives us the best RTP in this scenario.

How to Win at Video Poker Every Time

I can’t show you how to win video poker games every time you play because it’s not possible. I wish I could, but I can’t. The house always has an edge. However, as I’ve explained, there are things you can do to improve your theoretical return rate.

With this in mind, here are three lessons you can take from my Jacks or Better section and apply to other types of video poker:

Tip #1: Learn How to Win Poker Hands

Learn how to win poker hands before you start playing. By this, I mean that you need to know the ranking of poker hands and, in turn, how to make them. For example, you need to know that a flush consists of five cards of the same suit.

When you know the ranking of hands, look at the video poker rules for each variant you play. Winning hands in some variants aren’t winning hands in another. For example, a pair of tens is worthless in a game of Jacks or Better, but it’s classed as a winning hand in Tens or Better. Make sure you know this before you play.

Tip #2: Know Your Odds

Those of you with a penchant for numbers and a lot of time on your hands could sit and work out the odds for every starting hand. For instance, you could work out your odds of hitting a flush when you’ve been dealt A♥ 7♣ 8♥ 4♥ 10♥.

To do this, you’d need to know the number of cards you can hit to make a flush vs. the number of cards left in the deck. It’s not a hard equation to solve. The time-consuming part is doing this for every possible hand you can make with five starting cards.

Therefore, the best thing you can do is refer to the video poker strategy chart in this guide. The hierarchy takes into account the odds of making each hand based on your cards, which is why you always choose the best possible option.

There are more charts out there if you want to delve deeper into the world of video poker strategy. These charts are suitable for intermediates and pros because they take into account certain assumptions about your level of knowledge.

The difference between using the simple video poker strategy chart in this guide and one designed for pros is 0.08%. In other words, the theoretical RTP for simple poker strategy is 99.46%, while the RTP for advanced video poker strategy is 99.54%.

Tip #3: The Best Hand Isn’t Always the Best Hand

Go back to my example hand, and you’ll see that there are three cards to a royal flush (i.e., the starting hand contains three of the five cards needed). If you only thought about the ranking of video poker hands, you’d probably hold these cards and draw two for a shot at hitting a royal flush.

That’s understandable because a royal flush is the best hand you can make, and we’re more than halfway towards making it. The problem, however, is that you need to hit two exact cards. In reality, there are better hands to play for.

They might not be the best-ranked hands with the biggest returns, but that’s not the goal. You should be trying to make the best-ranked hands with the best odds. Video poker strategy is all about small margins. That means trying to hit hands with the best long-term expectation.

Context Matters in Video Poker

Every game has its own video poker rules, payouts, and odds, so don’t assume that you can apply my tips blindly.

Take time to learn the basics of video poker and any new variant you play, and think about how to apply my video poker tips in each new scenario.

The more you do this, the better your overall understanding of video poker will be. This, in turn, will make you a better player who’s capable of adjusting to any video poker rules.

Top Video Poker Games to Play

I said earlier that game selection is an important skill in video poker. Here are five video poker variants with high RTP values:

Responsible Gambling

Always play responsibly, regardless of the video poker tips you use. Our responsible gambling page contains everything you need to know about managing your money and staying in control.

You can also use the responsible gambling tools provided by your chosen US online casinos, including personalized deposit and betting limits.

Finally, if you need advice from experts, reach out to these organizations:

• National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG)

• American Gaming Association

• Gamblers Anonymous

• Gam-Anon.org

• GamTalk.org