Video Poker

Video Poker has been around since the turn of the 20th century when Charles Fay, inventor of the Liberty Bell slot machine, designed a similar style machine, with poker, offering a draw style game. Today, Video Poker has morphed into a widely popular game which comes in many different styles and variations. Today, Video Poker’s appeal ranks highly among all casino games, just behind slot machines. A large part of Video Poker’s success is due to the fact, its poker made simple. Just the player and machine trying to make best winning hand potentials. Novice players don’t have to be poker professionals to enjoy a session of Video Poker because the machine will help you understand hand values, different winning potentials, and assist you in strategy for what to keep and throw away during the draw. While there are many different strategies out there, the main one to keep in mind is to always play the maximum bet to increase your winning possibilities.

Video Poker is just like regular poker, but different. In both styles of poker, you are still trying to make the best hand out of 5 cards, except in traditional poker, you are usually playing against other players or a dealer. With Video Poker, you are basically playing against a payout chart. These payout charts vary among different casinos and different versions of Video Poker, but always striving to reach the best winning hand possibility. When playing classic poker against other players or dealer, you usually don’t win anything for 2nd or 3rd best hands, however, in Video Poker, every hand combination matched on the payout chart is a winner. On average, most Video Poker machines with decent payout charts will net you up to 4000 coins if you are lucky enough to hit the highest winning combination of the Royal Flush while betting maximum coin values. There are other versions of Video Poker that have bonus pays for certain winning hands, such as Deuces Wild which usually will payout a premium bonus for hitting four 2’s.

Another great addition to Video Poker is the ability the play a multi-handed version. Multi-hand video poker versions are popular to many Video Poker players because of the increased winning potentials. Players can usually find 3,5,10, 25, 50, and 100 multi-handed options to choose from. Let’s say for instance you choose to play 10 hands simultaneously, the machine will deal you 9 hands with all cards facing down, and one hand facing up. Depending on the selections made on what to keep and throw away of the face up hand, determines what your other 9 hands will hold. For example, if you were dealt 3 Aces on the face up hand and you hold those 3 and discard the remaining 2 cards, the other 9 hands would all hold 3 Aces and draw 2 more cards randomly, increasing your odds of hitting better hands. Scoring big hands on the deal is a sure way of getting a bigger payoff, however, each hand played also must be paid for. So, lets say you are betting $.25 cents per deal, betting 5 coins max, you are betting a total of $1.25 per deal. That’s not so bad while playing one hand of Video Poker, but playing 10 hands in this multi-hand version is now costing $12.50 per deal. So, there is a higher risk involved playing multi-hand video poker versions, but the winning potential is also greater as well. If you get dealt a Royal Flush playing one-handed, you would probably win about 4000 coins. However, get that Royal Flush dealt to you playing a 10-Hand Version of Video Poker, now your win just got multiplied by 10 times, paying out 40,000 coins.

There many variations and monetary denominations to choose from while playing Video Poker. Always keep in mind, its always best to play maximum coin bets to maximize your best possible winning potential. However, find a range that you are comfortable playing and the enjoyment of Video Poker will be more appealing. Try your luck at all the versions offered of Video Poker as you will surely enjoy some versions better than others.