Instructive Jacks or Better Video Poker Lessons

March 20, 2014 by

video-poker-lessons 1When you’re wanting to learn to play Jacks or Better, one of the best ways to improve is to look at example hands and try to decide how to play them before looking at expert analysis. Here we’re going to give you some instructive hands for the purple of giving you your own personal video poker lessons. Make sure to decide how to play these hands first before looking at the answers.

Video Poker Lessons for Jacks or Better

For our first hand, suppose you have QsQhJhTh9h. Most players are going to realize that they have a choice to make between a strong straight-flush draw and their pair of queens here that will give them a guaranteed payout. Along these lines, most people tend to keep the pair of queens because they feel more secure in making sure they get that payout, but the right play is to discard the queen of spades. An open-ended straight flush draw is stronger than any single pair hand. In a similar type of situation, four cards to a royal is better than any made hand worse than four of a kind.

A More Difficult Instructive Scenario

Most of your difficult plays are going to come down to having to decide between keeping a made hand or going with a draw. Sometimes you’ll have to decide between two different types of draws. For an example of these principles at work, let’s say you have 4c4hJhAhTh. Most players see that they have a choice between keeping the flush draw or the small pair. Neither of these hands are guaranteed a payout, but keeping the flush by discarding the four of club is better than keeping the pair.

However, in this particular situation, neither play is correct. As it turns out, having three cards to a royal flush is actually stronger than four cards to a normal flush. If you think that this was a trick hand, then you’re correct. It’s set up specifically to teach you this otherwise difficult-to-learn truth about draws in Jacks or Better video poker.

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