You would hold all five cards in any dealt straight or higher (with a few rare exceptions.) Select the cards you want to keep by using the hold buttons below your dealt cards or touching the cards on the screen, then press the deal button and the machine will replace all of the other cards with new cards. This is done by allowing you to discard up to all five cards from your original hand. Since it is a draw game, you are given one opportunity to improve your hand. Five cards will appear on the video screen and your goal is to try to make the best poker hand possible from those cards. So, how do you play? For the basic game, first, you make your initial wager, one to five coins (five is recommended for the increased pay on royal flushes) in the machine to make your bet. The basic game of video poker is played much the same way as any regular five card draw poker game with one huge exception: NO opponents and NO dealer to beat! You play the hand dealt in order to create the best final hand as possible and get paid according the pay table posted on the machines graphics.Īll video poker games have an element of skill! You can determine the payback percentage of video poker games, but not so with slots.

The primary difference between a slot machine and video poker is that while no strategy exists for slots, video poker is a game of skill (of course, “luck” plays a part as well, such as being dealt a “pat hand.”) Playing a hand of video poker correctly improves your odds (in the long run) over most slot machines.

While technically still considered a “ slot machine,” (the term “slot” originated from coins being inserted into a “slot”) in more recent years slots and video poker have split, each into their own separate categories. Frome showed that with the proper strategy the game offered some of the best odds in the casino. Video poker has been called “America’s National Game of Chance,” coined by the late Lenny Frome, considered to be the “Godfather” of video poker for his 1994 book Winning Strategies for Video Poker.

Triple chance poker strategy