Video Poker Hands and Pay Tables Explained

Learn to read video poker pay tables. Explore exact hand odds, returns for 9/6 Jacks or Better, and how to spot short-pay games.

Every video poker screen carries a pay table, and that one panel is both the rulebook and the price tag. It lists the hands that pay, states the prize for each coin bet and, through those prizes, fixes how much of your money the game keeps in the long run. Below you will find the hands ranked, their exact frequencies and contributions to the return in 9/6 Jacks or Better, an explanation of the 9/6 and 8/5 labels, a comparison of where paying hands begin in different games and a five-point check for short-pay tables.

Ranking the Hands From Royal Flush Down

The hand ranks come straight from five-card poker, with one big simplification: only your own five cards count, and nobody else’s hand is ever compared with yours. An ace may play low to complete the ace-to-five straight or high to complete the ten-to-ace straight, but a straight cannot turn the corner, so queen, king, ace, two, three is only an ace-high hand. For each hand, the table gives an example and the prize in 9/6 Jacks or Better at five coins.

Anything below a pair of jacks pays nothing in this game, even a pair of tens or an ace-high hand, and that cut-off is the origin of the name Jacks or Better. Other versions move the line: Tens or Better pays from a pair of tens, and wild-card versions reorder the ranking entirely, a topic covered in our wild card video poker guide.

Hand-by-Hand Odds in 9/6 Jacks or Better

Every figure below is an exact count over all final hands when each deal is played in the best possible way. A hand’s contribution is its probability times its prize, and the contributions add up to the return of the game.

The humble hands carry the game. Jacks or better, two pair and three of a kind together account for 70% of the return, simply because they arrive so often. The royal flush, which draws all the attention, supplies 1.98% of the 99.54%, and without it the game would return 97.56%. Expect one about every 40,391 hands, which at 720 hands an hour is some 56 hours of play.

Decoding the 9/6 and 8/5 Labels

Two numbers name a Jacks or Better table: the full house prize first, the flush prize second, each per coin bet. A 9/6 game pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. These two rows are where the common short-pay versions differ, and a smaller digit is easy to overlook, while every other row stays the same in all six tables listed here.

The price of a step down adds up. Dropping from 9/6 to 8/5 takes the expected cost from C$4.56 to C$27.02 on every C$1,000 wagered, close to six times higher, which for a C$1 hand at 720 hands an hour means C$3.28 against C$19.45 for an identical hour.

When 9/6 Means Something Else

The same two digits change meaning from game to game. In Jacks or Better, 9/6 is the best table you can find, but Double Bonus tops out at 10/7 and Double Double Bonus at 10/6, so a 9/6 version of those games is already a cut-down one:

So a label never states a return on its own. First name the game, then read the digits. The guide to the Jacks or Better family sets out the full-pay table of each version.

Where the Paying Hands Start

The lowest paying hand sets the character of a game, and every other row is built around it. In Jacks or Better it is a pair of jacks, and 45.5% of hands pay something. Tens or Better lowers the line to a pair of tens, pays on more hands and has to recover the cost elsewhere on its table. Joker Poker raises the line to a pair of kings, and in Deuces Wild, where wild cards make good hands common, it jumps to three of a kind. The table shows the share of hands that pay in five of the games covered in this series.

A game that pays on fewer hands is not cheaper or dearer by that fact alone. What matters is what the rest of the table does with the money, which is why the return and the swing sit beside the hit frequency in every version we compare.

A Five-Point Check for Short-Pay Games

A short-pay game is a full-pay game with some numbers quietly lowered, so check the screen in this order:

1. Royal flush, five-coin column. It should show 4,000, which is 800 per coin.
2. Full house and flush. Compare both with the full-pay label of the game you are playing.
3. Four of a kind. Bonus games pay by rank, so compare every row with the full-pay table.
4. Straight, three of a kind and two pair. They sit beneath the label, and few players look twice.
5. Lowest paying hand. A table that starts at jacks pays on fewer hands than one that starts at tens.

Do not assume two games share a table because they look alike, even inside the same lobby. Open the pay table every time you start a game, since it is the one place where the game states its price. Our video poker hub gathers the full-pay tables of the best-known versions.

The Other Seven Guides in This Series

Seven other guides sit alongside this one in the video poker guide directory, covering everything from game versions to provincial rules:

• video poker basics for Canadian players: five-card draw against a pay table, the hold buttons and the screen explained.
• Jacks or Better and its bonus cousins: Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus and the kicker rules compared.
• the wild card poker guide: full pay, NSUD and Loose Deuces beside Kings or Better Joker Poker.
• Spin Poker, progressive royals, and double up: the newer formats and the rules worth reading before you bet.
• video poker math: RTP and volatility: return, hit frequency and swing translated into Canadian dollars.
• the guide to holding the right cards: tricky deals with exact values for 9/6 Jacks or Better.
• the regulation and player protection guide: random outcomes, pay table disclosure and where to turn when something looks wrong.

Read the Table Before the Title

A pay table says what each hand pays, and nothing else. Video poker is entertainment that carries an expected cost on every hand, and no table, label or version can promise you a profit. Set your budget first, and if play stops being enjoyable, use the limits explained on our responsible gambling page.

Author:

Lucas Portela

Owner, BoldGambler • Avanhandava/SP

Oddsmaker, affiliate and content creator in the iGaming industry.

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