How to Read Video Poker Paytables

The first decision you have to make in a video poker game is whether or not you’re actually going to play. You can do this by looking at the paytable for the game that you’re playing to decide if you’re getting a good deal or not. The paytable itself will determine the maximum payout rate that you can achieve, and the biggest mistake that a lot of players make that damages their payout rates the most is choosing unfavorable paytables. Here we want to show you how to categorize games based on these paytables and how to compare video poker paytables to see which is best for you.

Jacks or Better Paytables

Jacks or Better is the most common type of video poker, so we’ll use it as an instructive example. The standard paytable for this game is called 9/6. You’ll get 800x for a royal, 50x for a straight flush, 25x for four of a kind, 9x for a full house and 6x for a flush. The rest of the paytable is standardized at 4x for a straight, 3x for three of a kind, 2x for two pair and 1x for a high pair. What you want to focus on here is the payouts for a full house and a flush since those are the two payouts that will be changed the most often. With this standard 9/6 paytable, you can earn a payout rate of up to 99.54 percent.

Let’s compare this to a few other less favorable paytables. With 9/5 Jacks or Better, you’ll only be able to achieve a 98.45 percent payout rate. Note that you would lose more than a percentage point on your payout rate just by choosing a slightly worse paytable. It gets even worse: The payout rate for 8/6 is 98.39 percent, and it’s a super-low 97.30 percent for the 8/5 table.

How to Compare Video Poker Paytables

Something you can learn from the Jacks or Better paytables, even if you don’t like that particular video poker variation, is that you can use just a few payout rates to read an entire paytable. The payout rates for straights and lower are usually standardized, and so are the payout rates for high hands like royal flushes and straight flushes. This means that if you want to compare paytables of a game quickly and easily, all you will usually have to do is look at the payouts for four of a kind, a full house and a flush. For wild card games, you might also need to look at the payout for five of a kind.

In some Deuces Wild games, for example, the payouts for four of a kind, a full house and a flush often look like 5/3/2 or 4/3/2. The 4/3/2 paytable is usually the best that you’ll find online. If you have an option between two of the same game with different paytables, then look at these core values to figure out which of the two is the best for you to play. Take your time with this because it can drastically change your chances of winning.