Learn How To Play Video Poker

Welcome to our introductory page on Video Poker. Here we teach you how to play, and everything you need to know to sit down to a game. After this page you should read on about strategy.

Combining elements from slot machines and the game of poker, video poker is one of the few casino games where the house expectation can drop below zero. In contrast to pure luck games like roulette or slots, video poker requires and strategy, and of course, a little luck.

When you sit down to play Video Poker, you'll need to deposit some cash into a slot, and hit the deal button to get started. The machine will deal you five cards, and it's your job to decide which of these cards you want to keep, and which you want to replace. You can replace all of them if you want, or just one, it's up to you. You only get the opportunity to replace cards once though, so what you're dealt the second time is what you win or lose on.

What you win or lose is defined by how good a hand you end up with, and what the machine you're playing pays for that hand. How good a hand is can be learned from looking at the ranking of poker hands. If you have played poker before, this is where it will come in handy (and just about the only spot actually). To learn the hand rankings of poker hands, check out this page.

Your goal as a player is to make the best decisions on each first-dealt hand, as to which cards you should keep. There is some intuition involved in this (hey, you're not going to break up three of a kind if you don't have a really good reason to) but these decisions aren't always an easy guess.

Fortunately we're not the first people to play Video Poker, not by a long shot. Out of all those who came before us, there have been a few that have learned to love the game enough to develop strategies for different variations of the game. These are usually called video poker strategy cards and you can check what they are and how they work for a couple of the most popular video poker games around.

Video Poker Strategy
Video Poker is a game of skill, with a bit of luck thrown in for good measure. A good Video Poker strategy is to follow a predefined strategy card, approach the game with a good bankroll management system, and be sure you're playing a full-pay machine. Pretty simple, so let's break it down.

More Video Poker Strategies
The best Video Poker strategies in the world fall flat on their face if you try to apply them to the wrong machine. Video Poker machines come in a thousand different variations, and each variation should be played with specific strategies for that machine. The nature of the machine is revealed entirely by its pay-schedule. Much like a slot machine's pay table, it lets you know in plain numbers what you will be paid for achieving particular hands.

Full Pay Video Poker
Finding a full-pay video poker machine is your first and foremost task when learning to be an advantage video poker player. A full-pay machine is one which has a pay-schedule that has not been altered in a way that lowers the overall payback percentage of the machine.