Poker is one of the most played games worldwide and it has evolved into hundreds of different variations. Video poker resembles a slot machine in its nature of being a single-player electronic console. It’s loosely based on five-card draw poker and presents players with the opportunity to win large while putting in a small amount of money.
Video poker types
Basically, video poker is a quite simple game. Played on the basis of draw poker, it gives the player 5 cards, one or more of which he is allowed to discard in exchange for new ones drawn from the same virtual deck. After the draw, the machine pays out if the hand or hands played match one of the winning combinations for this variation of video poker. Winning combinations are usually posted in the pay table and start with a minimum hand of a pair of Jacks.
There are many variations of video poker. In some deuces would serve as a wild card, in others there are various bonus pays (i.e. four aces with a five or smaller kicker pay out a bonus amount), and there is also multi-play poker, where follow-up hands after the base hand are being drawn from different decks of cards. Some of the most common variations are:
- Jacks or Better: the most common variation of video poker. Payoffs begin with a pair of jacks, which pays even money. Based on the payoff for full house and flush Jacks or Better may be a 9/6, 9/5, 8/6, 8/5, etc. These numbers represent the number of credits paid out for full house and flush. Full pay Jacks or Better game would pay off 9 credits for a full house and 6 for a flush.
- Tens or Better: A variation of 6/5 Jacks or better, where the minimum paying hand is a pair of tens.
- Deuces Wild: A variation of video poker in which all twos are wild, substituting for any other card in the deck in order to make a better hand. Minimum paying hand is Three of a Kind and payouts for flush and full house are significantly smaller than in Jacks or Better. The payout for a four of a kind makes up approximately one third of the payback percentage of the game and a four of a kind occurs on average approximately every fifteen hands.
- Bonus Poker: A video poker game based on Jacks or Better, while offering a higher payout percentage for four of a kind.
- Double Bonus: A variation of Jacks or better with a bonus payout for four aces.
- Double Double Bonus: A variation of Jacks or Better, which offers bonus payoffs for different four of a kinds.
History of Video Poker
Video poker stems out from the combination of a television-like monitor and a solid processor, thus the earliest models appeared the same time as the first personal computers – in the mid 1970s. It was back then when Dale Electronics introduced the Poker-Matic video poker machine. Even though the poker machines spread all over the Las Vegas Casinos, they weren’t a big hit. Then in 1975 the first video slot was introduced by Walt Fraley in Las Vegas, again not to become very popular, since players didn’t trust the payouts of the machines. Both video slots and video poker became more firmly established when the company IGT (also known as SIRCOMA) introduced Draw Poker. It used the same technology, and not actually spinning reels, which boosted the trust factor in video-based games of chance. Throughout the 1980s video poker was spreading because of the comfort it offered, as opposed to playing table games surrounded by a crowd. As technology has improved, a lot of variations of video poker were introduced and its popularity grew over time. With the introduction of online casino software by Microgaming in 1994, video poker spread all over the World Wide Web.