Video Poker

Every hand comes down to what you hold

Video Poker looks like a slot machine but plays like a puzzle with a right answer. You're dealt five cards, you choose which to keep, and you draw to replace the rest. In this Jacks or Better game, a pair of Jacks is the smallest hand that pays anything. The entire skill sits in that hold decision, and it isn't always obvious. The most common beginner error is keeping a single high card when you already hold a low pair. A pair, even a pair of twos, is a paying hand waiting to grow; two unmatched high cards usually are not.

Hold decisions that pay

• Keep any paying pair or better. The only draw worth breaking it for is four cards to a royal flush.
• Hold a low pair over an open-ended straight draw, but take four to a flush over the low pair. And never keep a kicker beside any pair: draw three and give the pair room to grow.
• With no pair, keep the strong draws first (four to a flush, then an open-ended straight), and otherwise hold your high cards: Jack, Queen, King, Ace.
• Dealt nothing at all, no pair, no draw, nothing above a ten? Throw all five away. A fresh hand beats a hopeless one.

The order of keeps, with numbers

When one deal offers two tempting keeps, a rough ladder settles the argument. Made paying hands come first, with a single famous exception: four cards to a royal flush outrank even a made flush or straight, because the royal's payout dwarfs the small sure win. After made hands come a paying high pair, then four to a flush, then a low pair, then an open-ended straight draw, then lone high cards. Among bare high cards, prefer two suited ones (say, king and jack of hearts) over unsuited, since they carry faint flush and royal chances at no extra cost. The percentages explain the order. A four-flush fills in on about one draw in five. A low pair improves to two pair or better a little more often than one draw in four. An open-ended straight lands about one draw in six. None of those are likely, which is why the sure thing usually wins the argument, and why the royal itself, at roughly one in forty thousand hands, stays a lifetime event rather than a plan.

Three hands that teach the game

Dealt a pair of threes with a king on the side, most new players keep the king. It's the wrong way round: keep the threes alone and draw three cards. The pair is a made rung on the ladder; the king is one card that needs another king just to reach the minimum. Second hand: ten, jack, queen and king of spades, plus a nine of hearts. The nine completes a straight, a guaranteed payout, and you should throw it away anyway, because four to a royal is the one draw that outranks a made hand. Third: two pair. Hold both pairs and draw one for the full house; never break two pair to chase something prettier. Play those three hands correctly and you're already ahead of plenty of people who have fed real quarters into these machines for years.

From saloon gadget to Vegas fixture

Poker machines are older than they look. In 1891 the Brooklyn firm Sittman and Pitt built a five-reel contraption of actual playing cards for New York bars, and since it couldn't pay out coins, winners collected a beer or a cigar from the bartender. The modern screen version arrived when Si Redd's company SIRCOMA, later renamed IGT, spread Draw Poker machines through Las Vegas from 1979, and the game stuck because the choices genuinely matter. On the best full-pay Jacks or Better machines, near-perfect play returns better than 99 percent of what's wagered, about the fairest game on a casino floor. Here there's no money in sight, just chips, which honestly makes it a better puzzle. You can drill the awkward deals (the low pair with a king, the four-flush beside a paying pair) until the right hold is automatic, watch the credit balance climb across a long session, and treat the royal flush (ten through ace in one suit) as the once-in-a-hundred-sessions payday it is.