Jacks or Better. Jacks or Better has a pay table of 9/6 which makes it one of the best video poker. Serious video poker players stay away from bars, booze and distractions and that's the key to making money playing video poker. Remember, these returns and percentages are based on thousands of hands of video poker. Play what you want to, with the best pay-tables.
Tourists often have a hard time finding good returns on video poker when visiting Las Vegas. This is mainly because most of the games on the Las Vegas Strip have a house edge of at least 2%. On top of that, the games at McCarran Airport are far worse than any of the games you’ll find at many Vegas casinos. Serious video poker players will want to stay away from the Strip all together when visiting Las Vegas, or at least take a short taxi ride to find the better games with a higher RTP.
While that is the case, there are still many options available to casino advantage players; you just have to know where to look. Below we’ll go into further detail on how you can find the best casinos to play video poker when visiting Las Vegas.
#1 The D: Best Video Poker Game in Las Vegas
The single best video poker machine in Las Vegas is located at one of my personal favorites; The D. The casino at The D is located downtown on the Fremont Street Experience, which you’ll recognize by the infamous red “D” logo. The game we are talking about is called Loose Deuces Wild and it returns 101.6% on five coins (with perfect play).
There is just one single machine with this game on it at The D, and it’s located on the second floor. All machines found on this level operate on coins. The denomination for this Loose Deuces Wild machine is a measly $.05. If that machine is taken, there is also a 10/7/5 Double Bonus game available in quarters just a few steps away.
Honorable Mention: Video Poker at The M Resort & Casino
We recently decided to add in The M Resort & Casino as an honorable mention. As of 2018, The M has one of the best overall video poker offerings for players among casinos in the Las Vegas area. When considering the 99% payback games available at machines around the resort, including at the bars, The M casino in Henderson is a great choice for video poker players.
There are many 99% machines available in the high limit room as well, with denominations as low as $1. This casino is about 20 minutes off the strip, but is one of the newest properties in Henderson and has one of the most modern layouts among Las Vegas Casinos.
Other Great Video Poker Games in Downtown Las Vegas
The D is not the only place on Fremont Street to find good video poker games that return over 100%. While the Vegas Strip’s positive payback video poker machines are few and far between, Fremont Street has a lot to offer in this regard. Below we have outlined the casinos with positive payback on video poker.
#2 El Cortez Video Poker
The El Cortez offers several $0.25 full pay Deuces Wild machines which have a 100.76% payback. Aside from this, they also spread 10/7/5 Double Bonus Poker in several locations on the casino floor. With this abundance of great options, it is one of the best casinos to visit for playing video poker.
#3 Las Vegas Club Video Poker (Now Closed)
The casino at Las Vegas Club in downtown Las Vegas spreads full pay Joker Poker which has a 100.64% return. All of these games operate on coins and return over 100%, which is much better than those located on the strip. This casino has since been sold, closed and a new property will take its place. For posterity and reference, we have left this in our guide.
#4 Boyd Gaming Video Poker
Two of the three Boyd Gaming properties in downtown Las Vegas offer video poker machines that return over 100%. In downtown Las Vegas, California and Main Street Station have 10/7/5 Double Bonus. These casinos also have a variety of full pay games that return 99.5% or better. Main Street Station has full pay Jacks or Better at the bar as well.
#5 Plaza Las Vegas Video Poker
It is also worth noting that Plaza Las Vegas recently upgraded all of its video poker machines, many of which now return over 100%. Its best game is 10/7/5 Double Bonus, which returns 100.17%. It also has 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe and 9/6 Jacks or Better. Both of these games are located at the bar, which is an added plus.
Vegas Locals’ Casinos with the Best Video Poker
If you are looking to get away from Fremont Street and the Las Vegas Strip, there are many locals casinos that offer 100%+ return video poker machines. All major Station Casinos properties offer video poker games that return over 100%. Red Rock, Santa Fe Station, Green Valley Ranch, Boulder Station and Texas Station are among the casinos that offer these games. Not all machines at these properties have the great returns. The ones that do will be clearly advertised, so they are fairly easy to spot.
The best game on these video poker machines is full pay Deuces Wild. Other great options include 10/7/5 Double Bonus and 10/6 Double Double Bonus. Some of the machines also offer full pay Joker Poker. All games are available in quarters. The Double and Double Double Bonus games are also available in $.50 and $1 denominations.
Palms spreads full pay Deuces Wild, Double Bonus and Double Double Bonus. Sam’s Town also offers these games. All are available in quarters.
Never Use Players Card in Full Pay Machines
When many Video poker players start out, they learn that they should always use a players card when giving video poker action. The games listed above are one of the only exceptions. The reason for this is that casinos will often assume players that play on these devices are experts who are giving up no edge on the game. This can stop all mailers from casinos which means no more free play or hotel offers. For this reason it will do you well to avoid using a players card on these types of machines; even if you have a players card at the casino.
How Can Casinos Make Money Off 100% Video Poker?
Casinos still make money from video poker games that return more than 100%. That is because many players will not play all five coins required for the extra royal flush bonus. Most of the games available require a complicated basic strategy that differs from Jacks or Better. Many players do not put in the time to learn these strategies, and the casinos know this. The Deuces Wild games found on these machines should not be played like a normal game with a lower pay table, since it has a completely different strategy.
For these reasons, casinos still manage to make money from the games we mentioned in this article. Always make sure to play five coins every hand and learn the proper strategy so that you can play at an advantage on full pay machines. This will result in a theoretical 100%+ return on your play.
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I never play slot machines. If I want to play at a gambling machine, I usually stick with real money video poker.
I have various reasons for this, but one of the most important reasons is because the odds of winning at video poker are far better than the odds of winning at a slot machine game.
How do you know what the odds of winning on a video poker machine are? I can offer some guidance in this post. To learn more, keep reading below.
Probability and Video Poker
Before you can calculate the probability of winning at video poker, you need to understand some of the basics of probability math.
The first and most important thing to understand is that an event’s probability is just a number between 0 and 1. The closer that number gets to 1, the likelier it is to happen.
By definition, something with a probability of 0 will never happen. Also by definition, something with a probability of 1 will always happen.
And if you add the probability of something happening with the probability of it not happening, you’ll also always get a total of 1.
That probability can be expressed in multiple formats, but the most useful formats are odds and percentages.
Everyone knows what a percentage is. It’s just a measure of how many times out of 100 you expect something to happen. If something happens 20% of the time, that means it happens 20 times out of every 100.
Odds, on the other hand, can measure probability. But they also measure the amount a bet pays out. Something with a 20% probability of happening has odds of 4 to 1. You have four ways it can happen and one way that it can’t.
Like other fractions, odds can be reduced. To get to that 4 to 1, we just converted 20% into 20/100, which reduces down to 1/5. That means it happens 1 out of 5 times.
Gambling Machines Measure Their Odds in Terms of Payback Percentage
When you’re dealing with a slot machine, you have a variety of symbols on each reel, each of which comes up a certain percentage of the time. You don’t have any way of estimating how often that symbol will show up, but the slot machine manufacturer knows.
When they take all the possible combinations and their percentages of coming up, they balance that against the payout for each of those combinations to create a profitable game for themselves.
Let’s say you have a really simple slot machine game with four potential winning combinations:
- You’ll get three bars 25% of the time and win even money.
- You’ll get three cherries 10% of the time and win 2 for 1.
- You’ll get three plums 5% of the time and win 3 for 1.
- You’ll get three pumpkins 1% of the time and win 5 for 1.
It’s easy to calculate the expected return (another phrase for “payback percentage”) for a game like this.
You start by calculating the expected value for each of the possible prizes. You just multiply the probability of winning by the amount you’ll win.
- 25% x 1 unit = 25%
- 10% x 2 units = 20%
- 5% x 3 units = 15%
- 1% x 5 units = 5%
Add those up, and you have the payback percentage for the game:
25% + 20% + 15% + 5% = 65%
Over time, on average, you’ll get back 65 cents for every dollar you bet on that slot machine game.
In the short run, over an hour or so, you might win some money or lose more than that. But over time, your average should get close to this.
The Advantage of Video Poker Over Slot Machines
My problem with slot machines is that they’re the only game in the casino where you don’t know what the odds of winning are.
When I’m rolling a pair of dice, I can calculate the probability of winning. When I’m playing blackjack, I can estimate the odds of winning, because I know what the odds of getting specific cards are. When I’m playing roulette, I know how many red and black outcomes are on the wheel.
But since slot machines are run by a random number generator, I have no way of knowing what the probability of getting three cherries in a row is. It could be 8 to 1, 16 to 1, or 1000 to 1.
All I know for sure is that the odds of getting each payout are lower than the payout odds for that combination.
Video poker, on the other hand, is based on a deck of 52 cards. I know how many of each card is in the deck, so I can estimate the odds of getting specific combinations.
When you combine that knowledge of probability with knowledge of the payouts for those combinations, you wind up with the payback percentage of the game.
Jacks or Better Is the Original Video Poker Game
For the most part, all video poker games are just variations of Jacks or Better. It’s a simple enough game. You bet between 1 and 5 coins and get dealt a virtual five-card poker hand. You then decide which of those five cards you want to discard and which you want to keep. The machine deals you replacement cards and pays off your bet based on the poker hand you wind up with.
The best possible hand is a royal flush, which pays off at 800 for 1 odds if you bet five coins. If you’ve bet fewer coins than that, it only pays off at 200 for 1 or 250 for 1, depending on the machine.
So, you should always bet the full five coins to take advantage of that higher payout. If you play with something approaching optimal strategy, you should get a winning hand about 45% of the time on a Jacks or Better video poker game.
That’s the short answer to “what are the odds of winning on a video poker machine,” by the way. It’s roughly 45%. But that’s not going deep enough. You should know more about it than that.
Since we know the probability of winding up with various combinations of cards, we can calculate the overall payback percentage for such a game. You just do the same calculations we did for the simple slot machine above.
You multiply the probability of winning each prize by the amount of that prize and add them all together to get your payback percentage.
- A pair of jacks or better comes up about 21% of the time and pays off at 1 for 1.
- Two pair comes up about 13% of the time and pays off at 2 for 1.
- Three of a kind comes up about 7%of the time and pays off at 3 for 1.
- A straight comes up about 1% of the time and pays off at 4 for 1.
- A flush comes up about 1% of the time and pays off at 6 for 1.
- A full house comes up about 1% of the time and pays off at 9 for 1.
- A four of a kind comes up about 0.2% of the time and pays off at 25 for 1.
- A straight flush comes up about 0.01% of the time and pays off at 50 for 1.
- A royal flush comes up about 0.002% of the time and pays off at 800 for 1.
Multiply those and add them all up, and you have a game with a payback percentage of about 99.5%.
But Not All Video Poker Games Are the Same
Of course, Jacks or Better is just one variation of video poker. You can find dozens of different video poker variations on the market. All of them are based on Jacks or Better, though.
With some of these variations, the big difference is the inclusion of wild cards. In Joker Poker, the game uses a 53-card deck with a joker that acts as a wild card. In Deuces Wild, the deck has the same 52 cards in it, but the twos are wild cards.
With games like these, the payouts for the various hands change based on how much more likely the higher hands are to appear.
But that’s not the only way casinos and game manufacturers vary their video poker games. They also change the payouts on various hands.
If they change those payouts enough, you get a different game. Bonus Poker, Double Bonus Poker, and Bonus Bonus Poker are basically variations of Jacks or Better that provide higher payouts for four of a kind hands of a certain ranking.
But even within a single narrow band of a game, like Jacks or Better, you can find multiple pay tables available. The differences in these pay tables change the payback percentage for the game.
With Jacks or Better, the pay table I used as an example is the best possible example. When manufacturers want to create a Jacks or Better game with better odds for the house, they have smaller payouts for the full house and the flush. Changing those payouts from 9 and 6 to 8 and 5 reduces the payback percentage from 99.5% to 97%.
Your Decisions Matter
One of the other fun things I like about video poker is that your decisions have an effect on the outcome. These payback percentages that I mention assume that you’re playing your cards optimally. In other words, you’re making the right decisions about which cards to keep and which ones to throw away.
In this respect, video poker is like blackjack. It’s a game of skill as well as a game of chance. Don’t believe me?
Best Video Poker Odds
Imagine what your payout would be if you broke a pair every time you got one. Can you see why that would hurt your results in the long run?
Best Video Poker Odds In Biloxi
Conclusion
What are the odds of winning at video poker? On a single hand, on most games, it’s about 45%. But that only tells a small part of the story.
Best Video Poker Odds Vegas
Winpalace online casino. Video poker offers a nearly endless amount of complexity when it comes to payback percentages and correct strategy. It’s a game worth learning to play.