People have been playing games for millennia. There are many games that are a lot older than poker but few games that are more popular! In the world of poker, video poker has taken the game by storm. Here is the Jackpot Capital video poker story.
For many gamers who love poker, video poker has many advantages over the kind of poker everyone played before the digital age. The one advantage that stands out is that in video poker, there is no bluffing. That’s right; you don’t have to sweat under your arms when you feel that you have to bluff and you never have to worry about getting bluffed into folding a winning hand.
Another big advantage that video poker lovers at Jackpot Capital have is multi-hand video poker which we will talk about at length a bit later. In short, in just a very few years, video poker has become one of the most popular online casino games!
Video poker is a modern variation of the old poker game called five card draw. In five card draw as you might play it at home with friends, you start out with five cards, there is a round of betting, and then every player discards cards and gets new cards in order to hopefully improve their hand.
Then there is one more round of betting and the showdown where the winner is determined by the standard poker hierarchy of winning hands.
In most home grown five card draw games, you can discard up to three cards or four if you show your ace. In video poker, you can discard all five of your cards even if you don’t have an ace.
Actually, there is one other player—the house! Not actually the house - you're really playing against the paytable with the hierarchy of winning hands. There is no dealer's hand. It's all you, the player.
You make all the decisions. In online video poker, that’s a good thing. The return to player rate in video poker is almost 100% and in some games can actually be a bit above 100%.
Of course, that depends on you using the best strategy on every hand! This is harder than it looks since some best strategy plays seem illogical at first.
We offer 14 variations of video poker. You can play each of them singly or in the multi-hand version. We offer 3-hand, 10-hand and 52-hand video poker in addition to the single-hand game.
This is the most common starting point for almost all video poker games. It means that you need at least a pair of jacks to win the hand. Getting a pair of jacks is not so hard since you actually can use up to ten cards from the standard deck.
It is in pursuit of winning hands that the strategy in video poker comes into play.
In every video poker game, there is a minimum bet and a maximum bet. In between are three other bets that are a factor of the minimum bet. So, in a $1 game, you can bet $1, $2, $3, $4, or $5.
The size of your bet should be in line with your bankroll and with the number of hands you wish to play. Many players can bet the maximum—and they should as we will soon see—if they play the single hand game. If they want to play a 52- hand game, they may have to make a lower bet. In this case, it depends on gaming with the bankroll you can afford to play with.
The pay table shows the payouts for every hand. A pair of jacks is a 1-1 win. In most games, two pair is also a 1-1 win. The pay scale goes up as the statistical difficulty of getting a hand goes up.
This means that as the size of your bet goes up, the size of your wins also goes up.
The cherry on top of the pay scale is the big extra bonus for getting a Royal Flush. You qualify for the big extra payout when you bet the maximum. Most players do bet the maximum, hoping to hit a Royal Flush. The strategy for video poker, then, is based in a large part to going after the Royal Flush.
You will even give up a pair, even a winning pair, if you can go for a Royal Flush on a draw of one card.
You do need to study and understand the best strategy for video poker. There are many charts available online that give you the top strategy. Keep in mind that the top strategy also depends on whether you are betting the maximum or not.
If you don’t bet the maximum, you won’t go after a Royal Flush because you won’t get the extra bonus if you hit one.
It is more accurate to say that they are uncommon than to say that they are rare. Along with going for a Royal Flush, you might go for other high paying hands.
Here is one example. Keep in mind that there are many examples. That’s one reason why we offer unlimited free play. Free play is a great way to practice video poker at no cost at all!
Let’s say that you have a low pair. That means that the pair is too low to win if you don’t get another pair or three of a kind. Let’s say that in addition to the low pair you have four cards of the same suit counting one of the cards in the pair. In that case, you give up the pair, hoping to get a flush which pays much higher than a simple winning pair.
If one of the suited cards you keep is a jack or better, you might also pair it even if you don’t get the flush. In that case, you would win with the pair. In addition to the flush draw, you might also have a straight flush draw. Sometimes, a player will get lucky and hit the straight flush and far more often the player will fill the straight but not the flush.
So, in this example, we have seen how giving up a pair, even a winning pair, can often be the best play. Learning these strategy tips will improve your winnings.
Obviously, the strategy you use in a simple Jacks or Better game is different than the strategy in a game with a joker or wild cards. That’s why it’s very important to learn the best strategy for every variation you choose to play.
When you play many hands at the same time, you start with one hand. You discard the cards you don’t want. Then the Random Number Generator issues new cards for every hand you’re playing.
Gamers who play big multi-hand video poker such as 52-hand games say that there is a great roller coaster type of atmosphere every time they click “deal” after they have discarded the cards they want to exchange.
