Discover the Fun of Playing Video Poker

Video poker is not quite poker and not quite slots. Take the best of both worlds and you have yourself a video poker machine. A game of skill combined with a few dashes of luck and you can win top dollar with this game. As such the excitement of knowing what you are doing and watching yourself get better and better adds enormously to the element of fun offered by this game.

The basics are simple. Once you have clicked deal you are dealt 5 cards face up. Compare the hand you have been dealt to the paytable and see how many hands you already have. You can better your chances at getting yourself a winning hand by keeping the cards that can make a valuable contribution and throw away the ones that you don't need. These discarded cards will be replaced by new ones that hopefully fit in with your line of thinking. Going for a better hand is often a better strategy than sticking with the weaker hand that may already be in front of you.

Like poker it has the same hands that match up in the same way. But unlike poker each hand is a brand new bet and you are not playing against others but rather against the machine. It is like the solitaire of pokers. Like slots your bet is proportional to the payouts and there is no pot and no bluffing. Multiple players can make things a little more confusing when you have to consider not just your best possible hand but those of your opponents as well. With the massive craze of Texas Hold'em worldwide many traditionally slots players have come to enjoy and love video poker as a great and fun alternative with better than great odds.

To make the game more fun familiarize yourself with some basic concepts right off the bat. To start with be sure what a full pay machine is. You can identify a full pay machine by looking at the pay table. It will show you that the payout for a full house is 9 credits and for a flush you can expect a payout of 6 credits. Hence the term 9/6 machine. These machines have great odds and while the other machines play to the same rules they have lower percentages for the casino to make some better odds.

Move up the ranks

Starting with jacks or better, the simplest form of video poker where you get paid for hands of jacks and higher, and then move onto deuces wild where the two becomes the wild. Smaller payouts in the lower hands are well rewarded for in the better hands such as the straight or the royal flush. Once you have figured out the game that suits you best and pays the best odds try your luck at multi-hand video poker where you can spread the risk and play big.

When you have mastered the art of video poker, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus and Double Double Bonus are great games. These offer higher pay back percentages for 4 of a kind and specifically for 4 aces. Some of these games are known to have a payout percentage of just over the 100% mark, so playing with a perfect strategy you can walk off the hero. Add luck to that and you can make a living out of having fun!

The best part

Video poker is easy to learn and you don't need to memorize the best hands. They are all up there on the screen for you to look at whenever the desire takes you. There is no time limit on playing your hand. You can scan your cheat sheet as long as you like before making your move. And what's more, unlike many of the online games available today, video poker is interactive. It demands your attention and gets the cogs of the brain turning. Winning has never felt better or more worth the effort.