Calculated odds
Video poker: odds and return by paytable
Video poker is one of the few games whose return can be read off the machine: it depends on the paytable and on how you play. Here are both, calculated.
In short
Jacks or Better 9/6: 99.54% return with optimal strategy, i.e. a house edge of 0.46%.
The paytable matters as much as how you play: the 8/5 version returns only 97.30%, the 6/5 version 95.00%.
With optimal strategy, a royal flush comes up on average once every 40,391 hands.
Every figure is calculated by DropCashCasino from the rules of the game; none is copied.
Return by paytable
| Paytable | Full house | Flush | Return (optimal strategy) | House edge | Royal flush: one hand in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 | 9 to 1 | 6 to 1 | 99.54% | 0.46% | 40,391 |
| 8/5 | 8 to 1 | 5 to 1 | 97.30% | 2.70% | 40,170 |
| 7/5 | 7 to 1 | 5 to 1 | 96.15% | 3.85% | 40,172 |
| 6/5 | 6 to 1 | 5 to 1 | 95.00% | 5.00% | 40,173 |
Exhaustive calculation: all 2,598,960 dealt hands, the 32 ways of choosing which cards to hold for each, and every replacement card. Royal flush paid 800 to 1, at maximum bet.
The dealt hand: probability of each combination
| Hand | Payout (9/6 paytable) | Possible hands | Probability | 1 in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 800 to 1 | 4 | 0.0002% | 649,740 |
| Straight flush | 50 to 1 | 36 | 0.0014% | 72,193 |
| Four of a kind | 25 to 1 | 624 | 0.0240% | 4,165 |
| Full house | 9 to 1 | 3,744 | 0.1441% | 694 |
| Flush | 6 to 1 | 5,108 | 0.1965% | 509 |
| Straight | 4 to 1 | 10,200 | 0.3925% | 255 |
| Three of a kind | 3 to 1 | 54,912 | 2.1128% | 47 |
| Two pair | 2 to 1 | 123,552 | 4.7539% | 21 |
| Jacks or better | 1 to 1 | 337,920 | 13.0021% | 7.7 |
| Nothing (low pairs included) | — | 2,062,860 | 79.3725% | 1.3 |
Without replacing any card, the 9/6 paytable would return only 33.7%: most of the return comes from the cards you hold and the ones you replace.
Reading a paytable
The usual name of a Jacks or Better paytable gives the payouts for the full house and the flush: “9/6” pays 9 to 1 on a full house and 6 to 1 on a flush. The other payouts are most often the same from one paytable to another. Just one unit less on the full house or the flush costs more than a point of return: look at the paytable before you play.
Optimal strategy
The return shown assumes you always keep the cards that give the highest average payout. Two simple rules of thumb follow: a pair of jacks or better is kept rather than four cards to a straight or a flush; four cards to a royal flush are worth more than a straight or a flush already dealt. Playing “by feel” easily costs several points of return.
What the calculation assumes
The calculation is based on a 52-card deck shuffled before every hand, and on the maximum bet, which pays 800 to 1 for the royal flush. With a smaller bet, the royal flush often pays less, and the return drops by as much.
Play responsibly
Even with the best paytable and perfect strategy, video poker keeps an edge for the house, and the swings from one session to the next are large. Set a budget before you play. If gambling is no longer fun, see the responsible gambling page: it lists helplines for each country.
