How to play video poker — and where 99.54% really comes from
Video poker looks like a slot machine and plays like nothing of the sort. The paytable is printed on the glass, the odds are fully knowable, and your decisions genuinely change the return — which cuts both ways.
The loop: deal, hold, draw
You bet, and five cards appear. You choose any of them to hold — zero to all five. The machine replaces the rest from the remaining 47 cards, and your final five-card hand pays whatever the schedule says. That's the whole game. One hand, one decision point, thirty-two possible ways to make it.
Reading the glass: 9/6 and its impostors
Two numbers on a Jacks or Better schedule tell you almost everything: what a full house and a flush pay per coin. The full-pay schedule — "9/6" — returns 99.54% with perfect play. The same game with an 8/5 schedule sitting two machines away returns roughly 2% less, and casinos rely on nobody checking. Every other rule identical; only the glass changed. Cruise ships are where this bites hardest — many stock 6/5 Jacks or Better, about 4.5% below the benchmark. If you play at sea, that single choice outweighs every cruise loyalty program difference, and our measured shipboard meters show the same story on slots.
Why max coins is non-negotiable
The royal flush pays 250 per coin at one to four coins — and 800 per coin at five. That jackpot jump is baked into every published return. Betting fewer than five coins of a smaller denomination is strictly better than short-coining a bigger one: five quarters beats one dollar, every time.
What "perfect play" actually demands
The famous returns are conditional on making the EV-best hold every hand. Some are obvious — you keep a dealt flush. Many aren't: with K♥ J♣ 9♦ 3♥ 2♠ you keep the two high cards, and with four to a royal you break a pat flush, because the royal draw is worth more than the sure thing. Casual players give back 2–4% on wrong holds without ever feeling it — the game doesn't tell you. Ours does: the simulator prices all 32 holds of every dealt hand and grades yours against the best one.
The machine that pays over 100%
Full-pay Deuces Wild — all four 2s wild, nothing below three of a kind pays — returns 100.76% with perfect play. Yes, over 100%: a real player edge of about 0.76%. Before booking flights to Vegas: full-pay schedules are rare, the edge assumes flawless play of a genuinely tricky strategy (never discard a deuce is only the start), and the hourly expectation at quarter stakes is coffee money with brutal variance. It's still the most honest paytable in the building.
The exact returns
These figures are computed by our engine — every one of the 2,598,960 possible deals, every one of the 32 holds of each, best hold kept — and cross-checked against the published values. Details on the methodology page.
Twelve real schedules, priced exactly. Each family leads with its full-pay version — the optimal one you'll basically never find on a floor — followed by the ladder casinos actually stock. Every return below is our own enumeration of all 2,598,960 deals × 32 holds; the published figures were reproduced before any of it was published here.
Jacks or Better
Jacks or Better (9/6 full-pay) — the benchmark schedule
| Hand | 1 coin | 5 coins |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush ★ | 250 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 250 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 125 |
| Full house | 9 | 45 |
| Flush | 6 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 20 |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 15 |
| Two pair | 2 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 5 |
| Version | What the glass changed | Return | Costs you* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 full-pay | — the benchmark | 99.54% | — |
| 9/5 | Flush 6→5 | 98.45% | $6.84/hr |
| 8/6 | Full house 9→8 | 98.39% | $7.20/hr |
| 8/5 | Full house 9→8 · Flush 6→5 | 97.30% | $14.03/hr |
| 7/5 | Full house 9→7 · Flush 6→5 | 96.15% | $21.23/hr |
| 6/5 | Full house 9→6 · Flush 6→5 | 95.00% | $28.42/hr |
Only two numbers move down the ladder — what a full house and a flush pay — and they quietly take 4.5% of your money between the top rung and the bottom.
Bonus Poker
Bonus Poker (8/5 full-pay) — the benchmark schedule
| Hand | 1 coin | 5 coins |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush ★ | 250 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 250 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 125 |
| Full house | 8 | 40 |
| Flush | 5 | 25 |
| Straight | 4 | 20 |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 15 |
| Two pair | 2 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 5 |
Four of a kind splits by rank on every rung: aces 80/coin, 2s–4s 40/coin, 5s–Ks 25/coin.
| Version | What the glass changed | Return | Costs you* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8/5 full-pay | — the benchmark | 99.17% | — |
| 7/5 | Full house 8→7 | 98.01% | $7.20/hr |
| 6/5 | Full house 8→6 | 96.87% | $14.36/hr |
The 80-per-coin four aces stay on every rung; the full house payout is what erodes. The aces are the advertisement — the full house is the price.
Deuces Wild
Deuces Wild (full-pay) — the benchmark schedule
| Hand | 1 coin | 5 coins |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush ★ | 250 | 4000 |
| Four deuces | 200 | 1000 |
| Wild royal flush | 25 | 125 |
| Five of a kind | 15 | 75 |
| Straight flush | 9 | 45 |
| Four of a kind | 5 | 25 |
| Full house | 3 | 15 |
| Flush | 2 | 10 |
| Straight | 2 | 10 |
| Three of a kind | 1 | 5 |
| Version | What the glass changed | Return | Costs you* |
|---|---|---|---|
| full-pay | — the benchmark | 100.76% player edge | — |
| "Not So Ugly" 25/16/10 | Five of a kind 15→16 · Straight flush 9→10 · Four of a kind 5→4 · Full house 3→4 · Flush 2→3 | 99.73% | $6.46/hr |
| "Illinois/Airport" 25/15/10 | Four of a kind 5→4 · Full house 3→4 · Flush 2→3 | 98.91% | $11.56/hr |
The wild-card game reshuffles half the schedule between versions, which makes the glass genuinely hard to read — the ladder below does the reading.
★ The royal flush pays 250 per coin at 1–4 coins but 800 per coin at 5, on every schedule here — betting short of max is voluntarily playing a worse machine. All returns assume max bet and perfect play.
*Cost per hour is the return gap versus the family's full-pay schedule at 500 hands/hour of quarter max-bet play ($625/hr of coin-in) — an expected-value figure, not a prediction for any session. And "perfect play" is load-bearing: most players give back another 2–4% in wrong holds on top of whatever the glass takes. The Play tab's strategy verdicts show you exactly what each hold costs.
What video poker doesn't do
It doesn't ever make you a favorite (Deuces excepted, barely, and only played perfectly). It doesn't remember that you're "due." And a hot machine is a machine that has been paying, not one that will. The return is a long-run property of the schedule and your decisions — nothing else on the floor, or in your pocket, moves it. If you want to feel what that long run looks like, run the Lab: fifty thousand perfect hands take about a minute, and the wiggle in that chart is the honest shape of this game.
All Video Poker guides → — the full library, from the basics to the edge cases.