Five-card draw against a paytable. Hold the right cards and a coach shows the exact optimal play — every hand.
Video poker is five-card draw against a paytable — there's no dealer and no opponent. You're dealt five cards, hold the ones you want to keep, and the rest are replaced from the same deck. Your final five-card hand is paid according to the paytable. A pair of Jacks or better is the smallest winning hand; the rarer the hand, the bigger the payout, up to the royal-flush jackpot.
The only skill is choosing what to hold, and it's a solved problem — for any dealt hand there's a single mathematically best hold. Our coach computes it exactly every hand by evaluating all 32 ways to hold and every possible draw, so you can check your instinct against the optimal play.
"9/6" is the full-pay table: a full house pays 9-for-1 and a flush pays 6-for-1. It's the best common Jacks or Better machine, returning 99.54% with perfect play. Payouts below are per coin, "for 1" (a payout of 1 returns your coin — break even):
| Hand | Per coin | 5 coins |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250* | 4,000* |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 250 |
| Four of a Kind | 25 | 125 |
| Full House | 9 | 45 |
| Flush | 6 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 20 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 2 | 10 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 5 |
*The royal flush pays 250 per coin at 1–4 coins, but jumps to the equivalent of 800 per coin (a 4,000-coin jackpot) when you bet all 5. That bonus is the entire reason to bet max.
Betting 5 coins is the single most important habit in video poker. Because the royal-flush bonus only applies on the fifth coin, playing fewer coins quietly raises the house edge from about 0.46% to roughly 1.6%. If five coins is more than you want to risk per hand, drop the coin denomination (play $0.25 coins instead of $1) — never drop the number of coins.
Optimal play comes down to ranking which hold is worth the most on average. The rules of thumb, in order:
On a 9/6 full-pay machine with 5 coins and optimal play, the return is 99.5439% — a house edge of about 0.46%, among the lowest bets in the building. Two things erode it fast: a stingier paytable and imperfect play.
| Paytable | Full House / Flush | Return (optimal play) |
|---|---|---|
| 9/6 (full pay) | 9 / 6 | 99.54% |
| 8/5 | 8 / 5 | 97.30% |
| 7/5 | 7 / 5 | 96.15% |
| 6/5 ("short pay") | 6 / 5 | 95.00% |
Always check the full-house and flush rows on the machine before you sit down — the difference between 9/6 and 8/5 is bigger than almost any strategy mistake.
Keep any paying hand, chase 4 to a royal flush even over a made flush or straight, keep a low pair over 3 to a straight or flush, and otherwise keep your high cards. Correct play returns about 99.54% on a 9/6 machine. The coach shows the exact best hold every hand.
The royal flush pays 250-for-1 per coin at 1–4 coins but 800-for-1 (a 4,000-coin jackpot) at 5 coins. That bonus only lands on the fifth coin, so betting fewer raises the house edge from ~0.46% to ~1.6%. Lower the coin value instead of the coin count.
The full-pay Jacks or Better table: full house pays 9-for-1, flush pays 6-for-1. It returns 99.54% with optimal play. Stingier 8/5 or 7/5 tables return about 97.3% or 96.1%.
On a 9/6 full-pay machine with 5 coins and optimal play, the return is 99.5439% — a house edge of about 0.46%. The edge only holds with perfect play and max coins.