About Video Poker and Payback Percentages

Video poker is the kind of casino game that has some similarities with slot machines. But in actuality, video poker is a slot machine game that adopts some of the specific playing rules of five card draw poker. Lots of players consider video poker as extremely superior than slot machines because playing skillfully on video poker can greatly affect the potential payback percentage of the game.

Influencing the payback percentage of slot machines is almost impossible to do but with video poker, its payback percentage can be greatly influenced especially if you are playing the game using the basic strategy perfectly.

Players who are somewhat intimidated to join in live poker and other card games would choose to play video poker instead. One of the major reasons is that with video poker players can think strategically while playing all alone in front of the machine.

Video poker is definitely an easy game to play. Bets are first placed in order for the five virtual cards to be dealt to you that are then displayed on the screen. Smart video poker players will always play the game with the maximum coin bet to ensure larger payoffs for their high ranking hands.

After the five virtual cards are dealt, you will then have to choose which cards to hold or discard, then the discarded cards will be replaced with new dealt cards from the deck. The final hand displayed on the screen will then be assessed if you have win or lose depending on the payout table for that video poker game.

Payback percentages of video poker are really good depending on the payout table of each video poker game. Jacks or Better usually has a 99.5% payback percentage and the Deuces Wild usually has a 100.7% payback percentage. This pretty high payback percentages of video poker is totally dependent on how perfect you have applied the basic strategy for the particular game of video poker.

Experience tells that players who play video poker without the perfect use of basic strategy will reduce the potential payback percentage of about 6% or higher. This shows that video poker is really a profitable casino game if and only if the basic strategy is correctly applied.

Knowing and becoming proficient in video poker basic strategy is quite easy today due to lots of resources that can be found over the Internet for free or for sale. And practicing the basic strategy that you have learned is now costless because of the many video poker games online that are free.