All American Video Poker Hand Values Explained

July 27, 2014 by

All American Video PokerThe game of All American Video Poker has a very atypical paytable where straights, flushes and full houses are all given the same 8x payout, and this can lead to interesting strategic decisions. It can also be confusing for players who are familiar with Jacks or Better and who do not know how to make the proper adjustments for the changed payouts. We’re going to show the value of different problem hands so that you can make these adjustments without second-guessing yourself.

Basic Decisions in All American Video Poker

The most basic decision in any video poker hand is figuring out which types of pairs are stronger than which types of draws, and vice versa. Let’s start with an open-ended straight draw against a low pair. With 99876 with no flush draw, for example, discarding either of the nines to break your pair will give you an average payout of 1.36x. However, if you follow conventional wisdom and keep your low pair, then you’ll miss out in a major way since that play only has a payout of 0.70x on average. You can see how the straight draws are much more powerful in this game.

What about a high pair against an open-ended straight draw? There’s a very instructive example for this: JJT98 with no flush draw. Keeping the jacks together has a payout of 1.408x, and going for the draw has a payout of 1.404x for a very small difference. However, this should tell you something important: You should only keep the high pair if the draw only includes a jack.

More Valuable Draws

For example, if you have with no flush draw, then discarding one of your jacks is going to leave you with which is stronger than because of the extra chance to catch a high pair. Along these lines, it should be surprising that discarding a jack in this second scenario has a 1.468x payout rate which is much higher than the 1.408x rate you get for keeping the jacks together.

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