Video Poker Online: The Paytables, the Real Return and Where to Play in the UK

The Best UK Casinos for Video Poker

7 of our fifteen ranked casinos publish a video poker range; the rest carry none, or do not say, and are left out rather than listed with a game they may not have.

The columns are the figures each operator publishes: how many video poker games it carries and the best return among them, alongside the table-game count and the banking figures.

Open a row for the rating breakdown. The order is our rating of the whole casino, not the size of its video poker range.

How a Hand of Video Poker Works

Five-card draw against a paytable, with no dealer and no opponent. The machine deals, you choose what to keep, it deals again, and the paytable decides.

1. Choose the Coins

   One to five coins per hand, at a coin size you set. Five coins is the only number that matters: on almost every paytable the royal flush pays 250 coins per coin on one to four, and 800 per coin on five. Playing fewer coins at a bigger size is the same money for a worse return.

2. The Deal

   Five cards from a shuffled 52-card deck, or 53 with a joker. The deck is shuffled by a certified random number generator before every hand; there is no memory of the last one.

3. Hold What You Want to Keep

   Tap the cards to keep. This is the only decision in the game, and it is where the published return is earned or lost: a 99.5% paytable returns 99.5% only to a player who holds correctly.

4. The Draw

   The discarded cards are replaced from the same deck. Five cards again; the hand is final.

5. The Paytable Pays

   From a pair of jacks or better, on the standard game, up to the royal flush. Nothing is paid for a lower hand. The table on the machine is the whole contract; read it before the first coin.

The Paytable Is the Whole Game

Two video poker machines with the same name can return four percentage points apart, and the only way to tell is to read two lines of the paytable. On Jacks or Better the full house and flush lines carry the difference, which is why the tables are named by them: 9/6, 8/5, 7/5.

Online lobbies in the UK carry a narrower range than a Las Vegas floor, and the full-pay tables are the exception rather than the rule. Our table above shows the best return each operator publishes for its video poker games; the figures run from the mid 96s to over 99%, which is the paytable difference made visible.

Why the Return Depends on You

Jacks or Better Strategy, the Short Version

The full strategy chart for Jacks or Better has about thirty lines. The ten below cover almost every hand you will see, in order of priority: find the first line that matches your five cards and hold that.

1. Keep Any Made Hand From a Straight Up

   A straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush or royal is held in full, with one exception: four cards to a royal flush beats a made straight or flush.

2. Four to a Royal Beats Almost Everything

   Hold four to a royal over a made flush or straight, over three of a kind, over two pair. The royal draw is worth more than any of those hands.

3. Three of a Kind, Two Pair, Then a High Pair

   Three of a kind and two pair are held as they are. A pair of jacks or better is held on its own: no kicker, however pretty.

4. Four to a Straight Flush Beats a Low Pair

   Then a low pair beats four to a flush and any open-ended straight draw. A low pair is also held over two high cards.

5. Two High Cards, Then One, Then Nothing

   With no pair and no draw, keep two suited high cards, then two unsuited, then a single jack or better. With none of those, discard all five.

Those ten rules get a 9/6 game to within about a tenth of a point of its published return. The exact chart, with every edge case, is printed in most games’ help pages and is worth reading once.

What Video Poker Costs

At a full-pay table played well, video poker is the cheapest game in the casino after a French roulette even-money bet: 0.46% of the stake on 9/6 Jacks or Better, and less than nothing on the two full-pay tables that return over 100%, which is why almost no online lobby carries them.

At the common online tables the price is closer to a plain slot: 2.70% on 8/5 Jacks or Better, 5.00% on 6/5. The difference between the best and worst table with the same name is bigger than the difference between a slot and a roulette wheel.

Over an evening of five hundred hands at £1.25 (five 25p coins), that is about £3 expected cost on a 9/6 table, £17 on an 8/5 and £31 on a 6/5, before the swing of whether a royal turns up.

Playing Video Poker Well, in Five Steps

1. Find the Paytable in the Lobby

   Open the game’s help page before betting. Our table gives the best return each operator publishes; the game you open may be a worse table than that, and the paytable is the only way to know.

2. Set the Coin Size to Fit Five Coins

   Decide the stake per hand, divide by five, and set the coin size to that. Never play fewer than five coins.

3. Play Slowly and Hold by the Rules

   Speed is the enemy. A hand a minute at the right holds beats three hands a minute at casual ones, and costs a third as much per hour.

4. Set the Deposit Limit Before You Sit

   At £1.25 a hand and a hand every twenty seconds, an hour is £225 through the machine. Set the limit at the casino before the game opens.

5. Leave the Bonus Out of It

   Video poker is weighted low or excluded on most UK welcome offers. Play it with cash, and play the offer on whatever it was written for.

Video Poker Terms, in Plain English

Paytable

The list of hands and what each pays per coin. It is the game’s whole contract, and two machines with the same name can carry different ones.

Full pay

The best standard paytable for a given game: 9/6 Jacks or Better, 8/5 Bonus Poker, 10/7 Double Bonus. Rare online.

9/6, 8/5, 7/5

What the full house and the flush pay per coin. On a standard table everything else is fixed, so these two numbers are the price.

Royal flush

Ten to ace of one suit. Pays 250 per coin on one to four coins and 800 per coin on five, which is why five coins is not optional.

Hold

The cards you keep before the draw. The only decision in the game, and where the published return is earned or thrown away.

Draw

The second deal, replacing the cards you did not hold from the same shuffled deck.

Max coins

Five coins per hand. The coin size can be anything; the count should always be five.

Variance

How far an evening’s result swings from the long-run return. Lower than a slot on most video poker games, higher on Double Double Bonus.

Multi-hand

The same held cards played against three, five, ten or more separate draws at once. Same return per hand, more money per round.

RTP

Return to player, the share of every stake the game is built to return over the long run with correct play. From 95% to over 100% depending on the paytable.

Game weighting

How much a game counts towards clearing a bonus. Video poker is frequently weighted at 5% to 10%, or excluded.

Where to Go Next

Online blackjackThe other game where the published return depends on playing it properly, and the one with the closest price.

Best payout casinosThe operators ranked by published return across the lobby.

Casino bonusesWhich offers in our table weight video poker at zero, and which exclude it.

In Short