Three Jacks or Better High Pair Example Hands

April 24, 2014 by

Jacks or Better High PairIn Jacks or Better video poker, you’re often going to have to decide how to play certain hands between two or more different options. When you’re playing high pairs, this can be a very difficult task because you are guaranteed a payout if you keep your high pair, but you might have options for better average results with some sort of draw. What we’ve done here is put together three Jacks or Better high pair hands that will serve as instructive examples on the relative value of high pairs and various types of draws.

Jacks or Better High Pair Instructive Hands

Let’s start with a basic situation where you have to choose between a high pair and a flush draw with . You have three main options. If you go with the flush draw and break up your pair, you’re going to get an average return of 1.255 times your bet. Keeping the pair of jacks, on the other hand, gives you a 1.537x return. For players who think they should keep the high kicker, note that keeping the jacks with the ace in your hand by discarding two only gets you a 1.416x average return.

Now let’s throw in a twist with . Now you not only have the flush draw option, but you also have the option of keeping the three-card royal draw. Like before, keeping the high pair gets you a 1.537x return while keeping the flush draw gets you a 1.255x return. Some players like the three-card royal option here, but it has an even worse payout at 1.240x.

When You Can Break the High Pair

The biggest lesson you can learn from these hands comes from this third one: . As you can probably guess, going with the pair of jacks will net you a 1.537x return, and while that’s not bad, it doesn’t even compare to the massive 18.47x return that you get from breaking the pair and going for the four-card royal draw. As a matter of fact, four cards to a royal flush is better than any made hand that’s worse than a straight flush.

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