Video Poker Online Casinos

Since its arrival in casino floors in the 1970’s, video poker has earned itself a special place among the most loved games by both experienced players and novices. Although it is not particularly colorful or visually stunning, it is, in fact, a wonderful combination of skill, chance and winning opportunities. Video poker is often considered a player’s advantage type of game, along with table poker and blackjack, where skilled, well-informed players can turn the odds in their favor. It also eliminates the sense of intimidation that comes with sitting at a table and playing against others.

The popularity of the game has increased rapidly and continues to do so, especially after it became available in a virtual, online form. It is now simpler than ever, while at the same time it comes with all the thrill and the challenges of regular poker, so even well-versed poker players would sometimes find it difficult to come up with a mathematically correct strategy to win. Almost all web-based casinos are now offering at least several variations of video poker. Some of them are even extending their gaming collections with unique titles that offer different bonus games, increased payouts, or progressive jackpots.

With this seemingly endless number of gambling sites and the ones launching every day, finding a good online casino for playing video poker may be a hard task. Many experienced players, however, have their favorite places to gamble and these are not necessarily the largest or the most famous ones.

Basics of Online Video Poker

Video poker in online casinos is very similar to the original, console-based game found in almost every brick-and-mortar casino. It derives from the 5-card draw poker, which is considered to be one of the simplest forms of table poker, but instead of being played on a bulky, slot-like machine, it is a computer game, much like all the virtual table and card games we play today. Unlike in regular poker, where you play against other gamblers or a dealer, you play against a computer. Sophisticated software, called RNG (or Random Number Generator), determines what cards you will receive, while the outcome of the game depends only on your decisions and the randomness, generated by the RNG algorithm.

How to play

At the start of the game, players choose the denomination and the number of coins they wish to bet. After clicking the Deal/Draw button, they are given 5 cards which they can choose to hold. Then, another set of cards are dealt upon clicking the same button and the discarded cards are replaced by new ones. The goal is to collect a certain combination of cards, which qualifies for a winning. In most games, the winning hands, as these combinations are called, are 9.

The lowest paying hand is a Pair of Jacks (or a Pair of Tens in the game Tens or Better), followed by Two Pair, Three of a Kind, and Straight, which consists of 5 consecutive cards of varying suits. Next in the hand ranking are Flush, 5 cards of the same suit in no numerical order, Full House, which is 3 cards of the same order and a Pair, and Four of a Kind, which is self-explanatory. The hands that bring the highest payouts are Straight Flush, or 5 consecutive cards of the same suit, and Royal Flush, which is the strongest Straight Flush. It is formed by a Ten, a Jack, a Queen, a King, and an Ace of the same suit.

Each of these winning hands is paid a particular amount of money, determined by the pay table of each particular game. There are numerous variations of video poker and each of them has its own pay table that is in direct correlation with the payback percentage of the game you play. Typically, most video poker variations have RTPs (Return to Player) of 98-99%, but every modification in the pay table shows in the payback – it can decrease to 95% or goes beyond 100%. This means that if you bet $100 on a game with 100% payback, over time, you will win back your entire investment.

Video Poker Variations

The aforementioned rules apply to the most basic variation of table poker called Jacks or Better. However, some games have differently designed pay tables and additional winning hands, which reflect on the expected return, of course. For instance, in Tens or Better, the lowest hand that qualifies for winnings is a Pair of Tens, while Bonus Poker is a game where a hand of four Aces is better paid than four Twos, for instance. There are many other games, based on Jacks or Better, but with slightly different payouts.

Another highly popular video poker game that gave birth to many other variations is Deuces Wild. The Deuces in the game (in other words, the Twos) are Wild Cards, which means that you can use them as substitutes if you are missing one card to a winning combination. For example, a hand of three Tens and a Deuce will turn into a Four of a Kind hand and paid out accordingly. Wild Cards also make it possible for a new winning hand to emerge in certain games, the Five of a Kind. Logically, a Royal Flush without Wilds pays more than a Royal Flush with a Wild Card. This is also true for Joker Poker, where a single Joker is added to the deck of 52 cards and it serves as a Wild Card.

The basic video poker games are played with a single deck of cards (from Twos to Aces), but there are also variations where you bet on multiple hands simultaneously. And the cards in each hand are dealt from an individual deck, making the winning strategy more complex. Along with single-hand and multi-hand variations, we can also split video poker games into two other major groups – full pay games where the payout for Full House is 9 times the bet size, while the payout for Flush is 6 to 1, and the rest are low pay versions, which usually have less attractive payback percentages.

How to Choose a Casino

Some video poker games are more favorable to the player than others. There are literally hundreds of variants that are developed by different software providers, so the pay tables, the in-game features, and the quality of the graphics are varying. In addition, thousands of online casinos have added video poker among their offerings. There are, obviously, plenty of factors to take into account when choosing a good casino to play video poker at.

For most players, the first concern is the welcome bonus for new players (among other promotions), which sometimes makes your time in the casino worthwhile, helping you to play for free for several days or even return your investment. However, there is something more important and this is the credibility and the fairness of the casino – players should always choose sites which are properly licensed and certified to provide fair games with random results. The licenses can be issued by various regulators, depending on the gambling jurisdiction the casino and the player are in.

It is necessary for the websites to use TLS or SSL encryption – this technology encrypts users’ personal and banking data and keeps financial transactions secure. Of course, online casinos should clearly display all the important information on their sites, including the Terms and Conditions, which are sometimes perplexing and tricky, to say the least. All these are essential when it comes to real-money gambling and players are investing their own finances into the games.

Everything else is a question of personal preferences – whether players use credit cards to deposit or find e-wallets more convenient; whether they look for a casino which offers more diverse games; whether they want to contact the customer support via a live chat or by the phone; which currency they prefer to make payments in, and so on.

Top 10 Online Casinos for Video Poker