Video Poker Strategy: Pay Tables, Returns and the Jacks or Better Hold Order

Video poker looks like a slot machine, but it plays like a card game with fixed odds. You are dealt five cards from a freshly shuffled deck, choose which to hold, and draw replacements once. Because the deck is known and the payouts are printed on the screen, the long-run return of every pay table can be worked out exactly, and so can the best decision for every hand.

That makes two things matter more than anything else: which pay table you play and how closely you follow the right strategy for it. This guide covers both, with a hold order for the most common game and an honest look at how much any session can swing.

How video poker returns work

Every hand starts from a full 52-card deck (53 with a joker in some games). The chance of each final hand depends on the cards and on what you hold, and the pay table says what each hand pays. Multiply the two and add them up, and you get the game's return: the share of all money bet that comes back to players over a very long run, assuming the best decision on every hand.

So the return has two parts. The pay table sets the ceiling: a game that pays more for common hands returns more. Your strategy decides how close you get to that ceiling: every hold that is not the best one costs a little. Licensed online games are dealt by a tested random number generator, so there is no pattern to read and no hand is "due".

The house edge is simply 100% minus the return. On 9/6 Jacks or Better played perfectly that is 0.46%, among the lowest in the casino, but only if both parts are right.

How to read a pay table

Most video poker games are named after two rows of their pay table: what a full house and a flush pay for one coin. "9/6 Jacks or Better" pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. Those rows change the most between versions of a game, so they are the quickest way to compare two machines. Here is how much they move Jacks or Better, with optimal strategy and maximum coins:

Moving from 9/6 to 6/5 makes the same game more than ten times as expensive on average. Other games use the same naming: 8/5 Bonus Poker returns 99.17% and 7/5 Bonus Poker 98.01%; 9/6 Double Double Bonus returns 98.98%. Our video poker pay table lookup gives the published return for every table we could source.

The returns also assume maximum coins. The royal flush pays 800 per coin only when you bet the maximum (usually five coins, 4,000 in total); with fewer coins it pays 250 per coin, which costs well over a percentage point of return. If five coins at your coin size is more than your budget allows, choose a smaller coin size rather than fewer coins.

Jacks or Better 9/6: the simple hold order

Look at your five cards, go down this list and hold the first combination you have. Everything not held is discarded. A high card is a jack, queen, king or ace; a high pair is a pair of them, which pays even money in Jacks or Better.

1. Four of a kind, straight flush or royal flush
2. Four to a royal flush
3. Three of a kind, straight, flush or full house
4. Four to a straight flush
5. Two pair
6. High pair (jacks or better)
7. Three to a royal flush
8. Four to a flush
9. Low pair (twos to tens)
10. Four to an outside straight (open at both ends, such as 6-7-8-9)
11. Two suited high cards
12. Three to a straight flush
13. Two unsuited high cards (if you have more than two, hold the lowest two)
14. Suited 10 with a jack, queen or king
15. One high card
16. Discard everything and draw five new cards

This list returns 99.46% on 9/6 Jacks or Better, against 99.54% for the full optimal strategy: the difference is about one total bet every 1,178 hands. It is written for the 9/6 table. Other games, especially Deuces Wild and the bonus games, need their own strategies, and using this one on them costs more.

Common mistakes

• Holding a kicker. Keeping an ace beside a pair, or a high card beside three of a kind, lowers your chance of improving. Hold the pair or the trips alone.
• Keeping a high pair over four to a royal. With J-Q-K-A suited plus a matching jack or other card, break the pair: four to a royal ranks above a high pair, and even above a made flush or straight in this game.
• Chasing inside straights. Four to an inside straight (such as 5-6-8-9) is not on the simple list; with no high cards, drawing five new cards is better.
• Three unsuited high cards: a simplification, not a mistake. The simple hold order keeps the two lowest of unsuited J-Q-K (jack and queen); full optimal 9/6 strategy holds all three. The difference is tiny.
• Playing fewer coins on a max-coin table. The royal bonus is part of the published return; without it the game is worse than its name suggests.
• Playing by feel on a good table. A strong pay table played on instinct can cost more than a weaker table played well.

Variance and session budgets

A low house edge is an average over hundreds of thousands of hands. A large share of the return in Jacks or Better comes from the royal flush, which arrives roughly once every 40,000 hands, so most sessions finish below the average and a few finish well above it. Losing runs of a hundred hands or more are normal.

It helps to think in total stakes rather than hands. At five coins of 25 cents ($1.25 a hand) and 600 hands an hour, you wager $750 an hour. At 99.54% the average cost of that hour is about $3.45, but a single hour can easily end $100 or more down. Faster play and bigger coins raise both the average cost and the swings.

• Pick the coin size from your budget: a session budget of at least 200 to 300 total bets gives the game room to swing.
• Set a loss limit and a time limit before you start, and stop when you reach either.
• Don't raise your stake to win back losses. The next hand has the same odds as the last one.

Our bankroll management guide explains how to size a session budget and stake, and the same ideas apply to every casino game.

Keep it entertainment

Video poker rewards careful play, but it is still gambling: over time the casino keeps a share of almost every pay table, and no strategy changes the odds of the next deal. Play with money you can afford to lose, take breaks, and use the deposit limits and time-outs your casino offers. If you want to check your own habits, take our private self-check; our responsible gambling page lists free, confidential support, available any time.