How To Play Video Poker in New Zealand – Part 2 | Table Layout

We hope that you enjoyed PART 1 of this guide and are now up to speed with what to expect when faced with a video poker machine. In PART 2 of the guide we turn our attention to the pay table which contains the most important information available to the player. You can use this information to determine the return you can expect from the game along with volatility that it comes with. Understanding this information is essential if you want to devise a winning strategy at video poker.

Pay Table Layout of Video Poker

On most video poker machines, the entire pay table is displayed on the screen. Some machines however may choose to show part of the table and you are required to touch / select the ‘More Pays’ option on the screen to get the complete information. Regardless of how much the information is shown at once, the general layout remains the same. The top line of the screen shows the royal flush followed by lower paying hands down to the lowest paying hand.

A description of the hand is displayed in the left column and to the right are columns which show the pays for that hand with an increasing number of credits played. The first column displays the pay for having one credit in play while the second shows the pay for two credits and this continues all the way to 5 columns normally showing 5 credits.

Jacks or Better

One of the most common games of video poker is Jacks or Better (9/6). The game gets the name as it pays nine credits per credit played for a full house and 6 credits per credit played for a flush. You need to have a pair of Jacks or better to have a winning hand. The pays for a full house and flush are used to define the game because casinos will use these two winning hands to modify pays when altering returns. All other pay lines are left alone. As a result, you as a player know the pays for all possible winning hands and can have an outcome of nine different types of paying hand:

Royal Flush, Straight Flush, 4 of a Kind, Full House, Flush, Straight, 3 of a Kind, 2 Pairs and a pair of Jacks or Better. For each additional credit that is played, the winning amount also increased by the pay for one credit. A pair of jacks pays for one credit played and keeps on going up with each additional credit adding one credit to the pay for the hand. This is true for all hands on the table except for the royal flush. The royal flush pays 250 credits for one credit played and each subsequent credit pays an additional 250 credits until you reach the 5 credits. At the end, a total of 5 credits pays 4,000 credits with pay odds of 800 to 1.

Double Bonus

All casino games provide you a bonus that can take various forms. With video poker getting a bonus for a royal flush with 5 credits is a norm. While other games will pay bonus which is the same ratio as the number of credits played, none will provide a bonus pay for playing 5 credits. In the royal flush, the pay for each additional credit played increases by the same amount per coin. The term ‘double bonus’ is used to denote the pay for four 5’s through kings and pays at a rate of 50 for 1.

With Jacks or Better, the game we spoke about previously each four of a kind pays the same (25 for 1) what its rank. For Jacks or Better, the only pays that were changed by the casino are those for a flush or full house. However, casinos now have a habit of altering the pays. For Jacks or Better usually played at 9/6, casinos can alter the pays to 8/6 or 9/5.

Other ways of reducing the pay is to reduce the pay only for max credits played. Therefore, before you jump onto a game of video poker it is also advisable to pay attention to the pay table. In today’s environment it is quite possible for an online casino to award less than favourable pay outs so always be on the lookout for a machine that is offering the best possible pay out. For Double Bonus, the casino can also alter the pay for a straight.