Video poker is one of the most popular ways to gamble around the world. Video poker online combines elements of the traditional poker game with slot-style video gaming. You can even find video poker games in places outside casinos: gas stations, bars, airports, and racinos throughout America. 

If you want to succeed at online video poker, real money players have to learn basic strategy in their chosen video poker variant. Like the name implies, video poker is played on a video screen with like modern slots, but the game is based on five-card draw poker.

Most video poker titles in fancy casinos use a touchscreen, though older video poker machines have buttons that you push to interact. In video poker, you place a bet and you’re dealt five cards. Video poker machines follow traditional poker hand hierarchy, featuring a pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and a top hand of a royal flush.

Video poker machines tend to have small bet maximums, like slot machines. 

During gameplay, you can choose to discard or not discard from your hand to build a better hand. Video poker machines vary, so the winning combinations and payouts for each machine might be different. That information is displayed on a paytable on the machine’s face.

Video poker games offer casino gamblers some of the best odds on the casino floor. Some video poker games, if you play them according to perfect strategy, are actually positive expectation games. In other words, over time, the house can expect to lose money instead of the gambler.

Find the right paytable on the right machine and you’ll find the odds tipped slightly in your favor. If you know what video poker machines to play, and you manage to earn some free drinks or free food along the way, you’ll find yourself squarely in the black at the end of a gaming session. Becoming a member of the slots club and getting a percentage of your playback is an important part of getting a positive expectation deal.

You won’t find a slot machine that offers better than a 98% payback. Video poker machines offer many of the advantages of slot play with better odds. Today’s video poker games are more like video games, with lots of animation, sounds, and even bonus game chances. If you like to sit at a slot machine, zone out, drink a couple of beers, and play a game that doesn’t involve much brain power, video poker gives you a better chance of winning money than slot machines.

Because all machines are different, it is hard to give tips on each kind of video poker available. Instead, here are three rules that can be applied as general video poker tips across all machines.

1. Play free video poker online.

Free video poker games are common online. Most online casinos offer play money video poker. This helps you learn the rules of different video poker titles without risking real money. Don’t go into a casino and play video poker without any experience. Free video poker games are everywhere, so try your hand before you sit in front of the real deal.

2. Study a machine’s payout table.

If you don’t know what a video poker machine will pay for different hands, you don’t know whether or not it’s a good or bad video poker game. One rule of thumb, the more wild cards there are in a video poker title, the harder it is to get to the better payouts. You learn things like that by studying payout tables. The video poker games that offer you the best odds have no wild cards at all, and offer payouts starting at just a pair of Jacks or better. Some Deuces Wild games offer positive expectation if played with perfect strategy thanks to the payout table structure. As a counter-example, the popular Joker’s Wild video poker games has the lowest payout on two pair or better, so it is harder to win on Joker’s Wild than a wild card-less video poker game.

3. Bet maximum.

Everyone’s video poker strategy is a little different, but most video poker players agree that maximum bets are always the best play.

There’s an entire type of online video poker real money machines, called a progressive payout machine, that only pays out the highest jackpots to maximum bets. These machines have different schedules for maximum bets than lower bets, so you’d want to bet the highest amount possible when playing those machines. The trick is knowing how to read a payout schedule and figure out if it is worthwhile to bet max, or if you can save a little of your bankroll with smaller bets.

Now that you know the basics of video poker, follow these three simple tips and you should be able to have some good cheap entertainment at your local video poker game. Look for the best payout schedules and remember that video poker offers some of the better odds of any game on the casino floor.