Video Poker Strategy and the Costliest Mistakes

Learn video poker strategy: use the 16-step Jacks or Better chart, avoid costly hold mistakes, and see exact hand values per coin.

Once the cards are dealt, the hold is the one decision that belongs to you. Below you will find a definition of optimal play, a look at how many cards the best hold keeps, a 16-step list for 9/6 Jacks or Better that captures nearly all of the return, six deals in which the tempting play is wrong, the cost of common mistakes per hour in Canadian dollars and a frank account of what strategy cannot change.

The Best Hold Is the Highest Average

Each deal can be held in 32 ways, anywhere from discarding everything to keeping the lot. The optimal choice is the one whose average payout, taken over every draw that could follow, is highest, and on 9/6 Jacks or Better that earns 99.54%. Average is the key word. The best hold can lose on a given hand while a weaker one wins, which is why strategy has to be judged across millions of hands and never by the next one. Its purpose is to keep you from handing return back to the house.

Only two things decide the best hold: the five cards you were dealt and the pay table in front of you. Your last result, the length of your session and the size of your balance never enter the calculation. A bigger prize on one row raises the worth of every card combination that leads to it, so the best hold moves whenever the table does.

How Many Cards the Best Hold Keeps

Of the 2,598,960 possible starting hands, how many cards should the best hold keep? The table gives the answer for 9/6 Jacks or Better.

Two-card holds lead the list because pairs and high-card combinations settle most deals. Holding all five cards is correct on just 0.7% of deals, while 20.6% of deals already pay before the draw. Choosing between small holds is where most of the skill sits, and that is exactly what a ranked list captures well.

The 16 Steps in Plain Words

Work down the list from the top and stop at the first line that fits your hand, then keep exactly those cards. High cards here means jacks, queens, kings and aces. An outside straight draw is four cards in sequence that either end can complete, for example 5-6-7-8, needing a 4 or a 9. The percentage after each step is the share of deals where that line is the first match. Followed to the letter, the list returns 99.46%, within 0.08 points of the 99.54% for perfect play. It follows the Wizard of Odds’ simple strategy for this table, and we recomputed its return exactly instead of copying it.

1. A made royal flush, straight flush or four of a kind (0.03% of deals)
2. Four cards to a royal flush (0.04% of deals)
3. A made three of a kind, straight, flush or full house (2.84% of deals)
4. Four cards to a straight flush (0.20% of deals)
5. Two pair (4.75% of deals)
6. A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces (12.98% of deals)
7. Three cards to a royal flush (1.09% of deals)
8. Four cards to a flush (3.29% of deals)
9. A pair of tens or lower (28.22% of deals)
10. Four cards to an outside straight (2.27% of deals)
11. Two suited high cards (6.82% of deals)
12. Three cards to a straight flush (2.53% of deals)
13. Two unsuited high cards (with three or more, keep the lowest two) (15.55% of deals)
14. The 10 suited with a jack, queen or king (1.14% of deals)
15. A single high card (15.01% of deals)
16. Nothing: discard everything and draw five new cards (3.25% of deals)

The simplification has a price: it chooses a different hold from the optimum on 2.3% of deals, which works out to one bet lost every 1,181 hands, or C$0.61 an hour at C$1 a hand and 720 hands an hour. That is a small price for a list you can memorize.

Six Deals Worth Studying

Some holds feel wrong until the numbers are on the table. In each row you see a deal, the best hold and the tempting alternative, with both values per coin bet on 9/6 Jacks or Better.

Read the rows in order. Four cards to a royal flush, whose prize dwarfs everything else, beat even a made flush. Four cards to a flush beat a low pair, which pays nothing on its own, because the draw keeps a larger prize within reach. A pair, even a low one, outscores a thin draw: the pair of kings beats three cards to a royal flush and the pair of sixes beats the suited jack and king. Four cards to an open straight beat a lone ace. And a card kept beside a pair shrinks the draw, so a spare ace next to kings subtracts value instead of adding it.

Pricing the Mistakes by the Hour

Some of the costliest mistakes happen before the first deal, in the game chosen and the coins bet, and others in the strategy brought to the game. The table prices each one against perfect play on the same game, in expected extra cost per C$1,000 wagered and per 720-hand hour at C$1 a hand.

The last two rows show how much one habit can matter: carrying a chart from one game to another costs far more than any single wrong hold. The next table shows what the Jacks or Better chart does on other games, sorted from the most costly to the least.

On Bonus Poker and Aces and Faces the Jacks or Better chart loses almost nothing, because those tables share its shape. As a pay table moves further away, the chart fails quickly, so before trying an unfamiliar game, track down the strategy written for that exact table. Our Double Bonus and Aces and Faces guide and Deuces Wild and Joker guide show how the holds move.

What No Strategy Can Fix

No hold changes the pay table. Perfect play on 8/5 Jacks or Better still costs 2.70% of every dollar wagered, and on 9/6 only 35.9% of 720-hand hours end ahead, a point developed in our guide to hours and bankrolls.

Strategy also cannot find patterns, because there are none: a new shuffle precedes every hand, no royal is ever due and counting earlier cards tells you nothing. Ontario’s Standard 4.24 goes further and requires the probability of a specific game outcome to be constant and independent of game history. Betting systems collapse for the same reason. The house keeps a constant fraction of the total staked, so bigger or smaller bets after wins and losses only alter the amount wagered, never the fraction retained.

Where to Go After Strategy

The other seven guides in the series are listed below, and the video poker hub gathers all eight in one place:

• how to play video poker online: the deal, the hold and the draw followed through one complete hand, with an hour priced in Canadian dollars.
• the pay table reading guide: two numbers on the screen that separate a full-pay game from a short-pay one.
• Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, and Aces and Faces: how a bigger prize for four of a kind reshapes a game.
• Deuces Wild and Joker Poker explained: wild card rules, three pay tables and the reasons swings grow.
• the guide to multi-line video poker: lines from three to a hundred, and how far one deal can swing.
• how video poker returns are measured: perfect-play RTP, the royal flush share and the chance of finishing ahead.
• how Canadian regulators oversee video poker: AGCO standards, provincial platforms and what gets tested.

A Sharper Hold Is Still Entertainment

Better holds shrink the price of video poker without erasing it. The game remains entertainment you pay for, each hand carries an expected cost, and no chart, system or hot streak guarantees a profit. Set a budget and a time limit before the first deal, and 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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