The Best Video Poker Casinos - 2024

Video Poker Explained

Loved by beginners and experienced players alike, video poker is one of the most popular casino games out there. It’s loved mostly for its combination of simple but exciting gameplay. Essentially a simplified version of 5 card poker with some added twists, the aim is to hold and swap cards to try to get the best hand possible. Fancy trying your luck at winning some big payouts? Check out this guide to help you get to grips with playing video poker at online casinos.

How to Play

Video poker is a pretty simple game, and though certain gameplay aspects change between variations, the basic concept remains the same. Check out this step by step guide to help you get started

1. Set your coin size 
   You’ll need to decide how much you want to wager with each coin. Setting the coin size determines how much your coins are worth in real money.
2. Place your bet 
   Now you’ll select how many coins you want to bet on each hand, which will determines the size of your potential payouts. You can bet between one to five coins- it’s up to you to decide.
3. Hit ‘deal’ 
   This will give you your first hand.
4. Hold and swap 
   You’ll need to select which cards you want to stick with and which you want to swap make the best hand possible.
5. Hit ‘deal’ again 
   This gives you the chance to swap any unwanted cards, replacing any cards you didn’t hold.
6. Check for wins 
   Get lucky with your final hand? Your winnings will be credited to your account.

Wagering

In online casino video poker you place your bets in ‘coins’. While you can often set coins at low as 25p, you can also set coins at as much as £20 in some video poker games. Whilst you can bet one to five coins per hand, lots of video poker players advise to always play every hand with five coins so that you have a chance of winning the jackpot. Your wager per hand will be dependent on the coin size and the number of coins you play. So let’s say you you set your coins at 25p and play five per hand- you’ll be wagering £1.25 each round. You can use the ‘max bet’ button to automatically bet five coins.

If you’re going to take the experts’ advice and bet 5 coins per hand, you should set your coin size accordingly. In essence, it’s better to play with 5 low value coins than it is to play with 2 or 3 larger coins. Of course, you can play with as few coins as you like – the choice is yours. You may not be able to hit the jackpot if you play with less than 5 coins, but you can still win big on your investment if the cards fall in your favour.

Holding and Swapping

The aim of the game is to try and hit a winning hand, and preferably a high one, so you need to try to work out which moves will give you the best chance of doing this. You should hold cards that give you a chance of winning and swap cards that are less likely to, or swap to try and get a higher ranking combination. In most games you can swap all five original cards if you wish. Let’s say you get dealt a 2, 4, 10, a Jack and a Queen. A pair of twos or fours is too low for a winning hand, so a possible move would be to hold the 10, Jack and Queen and swap the 2 and 4. You would then hope to either get a Jack or Queen to make winning a pair, or a 9 and a King, or a King and an Ace, to hit a straight.

The minimum winning hand varies from game to game. In the classic video poker game, Jacks or Better, winning hands start from a pair of Jacks. Some games start lower, at a pair of 9s or 10s, for example. From there, winnings hands are the same as in a regular game of poker, up to a royal flush. Of course, the higher your hand, the higher the potential payout.

Video Poker Variations

There are lots of video poker variations available at online casinos. Each has unique and exciting features, such as bonus rounds, wild cards and increased payouts on certain hands. Let’s take a look at the most popular:

Deuces Wild – This is the same as Jacks or Better but all twos are wild, meaning they can be substituted for any other card in the deck to make a better hand.

Joker Poker – Similar to Deuces Wild but uses a single joker as the wild card. Wild card variations generally have higher minimum winning hands, but also give players the chance to win using a ‘five of a kind’ hand.

Aces and Faces – This is almost identical to Jacks or Better, but gives an increased payout for four of a kind hands made using Aces, Kings, Queens or Jacks.

Bonus Poker – The same concept as Aces and Faces but gives an increased payout for four of a kind hands featuring Aces, twos, threes and fours. There’s many other ‘bonus’ variations which feature increased payouts for certain hands.

Multi-Hand Games – Many casinos offer video poker games in which you can play multiple hands simultaneously, up to 100 at a time at some sites. When you play these games any cards you hold will hold for all the hands, so if you get lucky you can potentially win some lucrative payouts.

Strategies

Online video poker offers some of the best odds of all casino games, and working on your strategy can further increase your chances of winning.

Video poker differs from other casino games, such as slots and roulette, in that it’s partly determined by the players’ skill and experience. Of course, you can never guarantee a win, but you can use strategies to help manage your bankroll and increase your chances of winning. The key lies in understanding which moves will give you the best chance of landing a winning hand if it’s worth the risk of swapping certain cards against your initial potential payout.

There are different strategies for different variations of video poker. Some strategies are tailored towards hitting royal flushes, while others are designed to simply win as many hands as possible. How far you want to go with a strategy depends on what kind of player you are and the size of your bankroll – some mathematical based strategies can be quite complex and detail what you should do for nearly every possible hand scenario.

It’s important even for casual players to have a basic understanding of video poker strategy so that you’re not just randomly selecting cards.

Payouts

Video poker games have payout tables which detail how much you will win depending on your hand and wager. Payout rates change between variations and also between different versions of the same game, so make sure to check this out before playing. For example, a ‘full pay’ Jacks or Better game will pay 9 times your wager for a full house and 6 times for a flush, whilst other versions of this variation may only pay out 8/6. While most casinos will remain competitive with their payouts rates, you’ll often find that multi-hand games have a more modest return.

The reason experienced players advise playing with 5 coins is that gives you the chance to win the jackpot – a 4,000x payout for a royal flush in a full pay Jacks or Better game. A full pay Jacks or Better payout table looks like this:

While all other hands payout proportionally to how many coins you wager, a royal flush jumps from a 1,000 payout on four coins to 4,000 on five coins, so you have the chance to bank some hefty bonus winnings.

The Odds

One reason that video poker is so popular is that some versions have a very low house edge – often less than 1%. This is pretty rare for online casino games and means video poker offers some of the best RTP rates out there.

For example, full pay Jacks or Better has a house edge of less than 0.5%, and these games can be found at many video poker casinos. It is possible to decrease the edge even further by playing perfect strategy. Unfortunately not all video poker games have such a low house edge, but this is usually because it’s easier to land winning combinations. For example, 10s or Better, multi-hand games and wild card variations can have house edges ranging from 1% to 5%. The edge depends on the variation, the software provider and the casino you’re playing at, so keep an eye out for these factors.

With regards to your chances of being dealt particular hands, these are the same as if you were dealing a real deck of cards. So you have around a 1 in 650,000 chance of being dealt a royal flush in your initial hand, and your chances improve the lower down you go through the possible hand combinations:

These are the approximate odds when playing with a 52 card deck. Of course, in video poker your chances of hitting certain hands can increase when you hold and swap cards. So whilst the odds of being dealt a royal flush are very high, they drop to 1 in 16,215 when you hold two cards and 1 in 47 when you hold four cards.