Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker finds an exciting middle ground between Deuces Wild video poker action and Bonus Poker pay tables. It takes the same concept of Deuces Wild, where there are four wild cards in the deck of 52. To that, it adds the prospect of more high-paying winning hands.

  1. Deuces Wild Bonus Optimal Strategy
  2. Play Deuces Wild For Fun
  3. Free Video Poker Deuces Wild
  4. Bonus Deuces Wild Strategy
  5. Deuces Wild Strategy Chart
  6. Multihand Bonus Deuces Wild

Video poker is known as a game that takes two different styles of casino play and combines them into something new, exciting, and lucrative for gamblers. From slots, it borrows the concept of one-person play at a self-contained gambling machine. Yet it also resembles table games because it allows players to use strategy to increase their winnings.

What Makes Super Bonus Deuces Wild Different?

Bonus Deuces Wild is almost identical to the traditional Deuces Wild game, which can be found here. You can follow the general strategy for deuces wild on this game. The only difference is with the payouts for a couple of the winning hands. In Bonus Deuces Wild, the 5 of a Kind is the bonus hand. I'm still practicing the online version of Deuces Wild Bonus to learn the strategy so that I can play this game at my local casino in the Multi-Streak format. Unlike my initial impression, there do seem to be quite a few differences between Bonus Deuces Wild and regular Deuces Wild (ex. You never hold 4 to a Straight in Bonus Deuces Wild at.

Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker can be considered the ideal video poker concoction. It takes two styles of play and mashes them together. The end result is a game that rewards those who are looking for short-term thrills and those in search of long-term profits.

First of all, Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker includes a wild card element. Any card designated as a wild card can be changed into any other card in the deck that improves the hand the most. In the case of this game, the twos, or “deuces,” in the deck are designated as wild.

Many Deuces Wild-style games follow a certain pay table that most regular video poker players can easily spot. But Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker uses a pay table that’s vastly different. As with any other Bonus Poker-type pay table, it adds higher payouts for some of the more difficult hands.

Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker puts a special emphasis on any hand with four deuces with an ace kicker or five of a kind accomplished with just a single deuce. These hands aren’t separated for special payment on a normal Deuces Wild table.

As a result, Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker gives players a few more opportunities for a big payout on a single hand. It means the game is a bit more volatile than traditional Deuces Wild. You’ll have bigger swings between wins and losses as you play.

But you get more opportunities to score big fast. Besides, Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker still offers an excellent payback percentage. This is especially true if you can find better pay tables.

In the following article, we’ll explain everything about Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker. We’ll take a look at basic video poker play, how wild cards work, and what the pay tables mean to payback. And we’ll show how to devise the ideal strategy to win big.

Learning Basic Video Poker

Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker stands as one of the many different versions of video poker that can be found either in casinos or online. And learning basic video poker gives an excellent foundation. There are certain types of video poker games that mess with the basic formula of deal, discard, and draw. But Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker isn’t one of them.

The only slight twists to Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker comes in the form of wild cards and the unique pay table. But first, let’s talk about video poker as a whole and the benefits it brings you.

Video poker is one of the easiest games in a casino to learn. Because of the ease of play, some people think it’s essentially another version of a slot machine. In fact, most casinos have slot machines and video poker within the same section.

But there are many ways in which video poker separates itself from slot machines, and most of them benefit the gambler. First of all, there’s a strategic element to video poker. Instead of just spinning the reels and hoping, as is the case with slot machines, you actually have a chance to impact gameplay.

In addition, video poker is based on probability math associated with making poker hands from a deck of 52 cards. Using math, you’ll know exactly what your chances are for making winning hands on the pay table. When playing slots, you never know what your chances are of coming up with a winning spin.

These probabilities also allow you to judge one video poker machine against another in terms of payback. Again, you can’t do that with slot machines. You won’t know if the machine you’re playing pays more or less than any of the others around you.

In all of these ways, video poker resembles table games more than slot machines. But video poker can be played in a solitary fashion. You don’t need other players or employees.

Most discerning gamblers also want to know about payback. Well, video poker pretty much outdistances slot machines. Many video poker games, including certain Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker pay tables, pay back more than table games.

On top of all that, you can play video poker very easily online at top gambling websites. That isn’t always the case with table games. With all of these benefits for gamblers, you might be anxious to try out Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker. First, let’s make sure you learn the basics of video poker with step-by-step instructions.

Step 1: Create a Bankroll

Your bankroll allows you to make bets on a video poker machine or online version of the game. It also serves as the place to collect any winnings you might amass.

On a video poker machine, the bankroll will come from either cash or a redemption ticket that you insert. If playing online, you’ll need to create a gambling account at a website then fund it.

In any case, the bankroll will appear on the video poker screen in units known as credits, or coins. Each of these units will correspond directly to the denomination of the game you have chosen.

For example, imagine that you were playing a 25-cent machine and made a five-coin bet. Since each coin equals 25 cents, that bet would equal $1.25 (5 times .25).

Step 2: Make a Bet

When playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, you can bet any amount between one and five coins. Five coins is known as the “Max Bet.” And, strategically, that’s the best bet you can make.

The reason we recommend the max comes down to the payment for a royal flush. When you bet between one and four coins and achieve this hand, you’ll receive payment of 250 coins for every one that you bet. At five coins bet, the royal flush will pay off 800 to 1, more than three times what you would get by betting less.

Deuces Wild Bonus Optimal Strategy

Your payback would take a hit if you were lucky enough to manage a royal flush but didn’t bet the full amount. If you think it’s too expensive to bet five coins every hand of Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, you might want to choose a lower denomination.

Doing that might allow you to make the max bet each hand. And it wouldn’t take too much of a bite from your gambling budget.

Step 3: Play a Hand

Video poker plays a lot like a one-person version of the table game known as Five-Card Draw. If you’ve ever played Five-Card Draw Poker, you know that you get a five-card deal. You then have the chance to discard cards and draw new ones to make the highest-ranked poker hand.

In video poker, you’re still dealing with that basic rhythm of play. But you won’t need to beat multiple players at a table as you would playing Five-Card Draw Poker. You just need to make one of the winning hands on the pay table to get some return on your bet.

Since we’re dealing with Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, which is a game with wild cards, the threshold for a winning hand is a bit higher than if you were playing Jacks or Better. The wild cards give a much better chance of making hands that would be tough to get if you were playing without them.

Here are the hands you’ll be striving for when playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker:

  • Pair of jacks or better
  • Two pair
  • Three of a kind
  • Straight (five cards of consecutive rank, like 3-4-5-6-7)
  • Flush (five cards of same suit)
  • Full house (three of a kind and two pair in the same hand)
  • Four of a kind
  • Straight flush (straight with five cards of same suit)
  • Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)

The payout for these hands is generally based on the fact that the ones at the top are easier to achieve than the ones at the bottom. As a result, payback increases as you move down the list.

You will receive five cards on the deal out of a simulated deck of 52, which mirrors the standard 52 card deck you all know. The simulated deck is constantly being “shuffled” within the software of the game, ensuring that each deal is completely random.

On the deal, the top five from the deck appear on the screen. That leaves 47 more cards which go back to constant shuffle mode until the draw.

Assess the five cards on the deal to see if you have any winning combinations either fully or partially in place. Knowing which cards are remaining in the deck, decide which cards in your hand are worth holding and which should be discarded.

The discarded cards will be replaced by others from the deck of 47. Remember that you don’t have to discard anything if your deal formed an excellent winning hand. Or, if you really can’t find anything of worth on the deal, you also have the choice of discarding all five cards.

You’ll make these choices both by determining the probabilities of making winning hands and also by considering how much each of these hands pay. There will be times when you’ll settle for a lower-paying hand because other possibilities are hard to come by.

Then, there will be other times when the payout for a potential winning hand is so great that it’s worth going for it even if it would take a lucky draw. It’s a classic risk-versus-reward scenario. These decisions will be further explained when we get to strategy.

Once you make your choice, you’ll press the buttons for the cards you want to hold then hit the “draw” button. Any discarded cards will be replaced by new ones from the deck. Your hand will then be complete and scored, meaning the software will add any winnings to your bankroll.

Video poker can continue in that manner as long as you have credits to bet. You can also cash out and collect the money in your bankroll at any time when playing at a machine. When playing online, you’ll have to follow withdrawal procedures to collect your winnings.

It’s that easy to play a hand of video poker. Now, let’s see how wild cards work.

Playing Video Poker With Wild Cards

Wild cards, which are a big part of Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, really transform the action. Hands that normally wouldn’t be within your reach suddenly come up often. It’s really exciting when you get a deal or draw and see one or, even better yet, multiple wild cards.

In Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, the wild cards are the twos in the deck. That means you have a one in 13 chance of seeing a wild card appear in any spot in your deal or draw. Once you see a wild card, you can imagine it being turned into any other card in the deck.

Let’s take a look at how this works. Imagine you were playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker and received the following deal.

If you were playing video poker without a wild card, this would not be a winning hand. But remember that you’re dealing with Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker and that all twos are wild.

Poker

As a result, you can imagine that the two can be turned into a five to give you three of a kind. That’s a paying hand on the Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker pay table, albeit a modest one. But, if you were to drop the six and seven, you’d have two cards on the draw to make that an even better hand.

But what about if you were to keep the five, six, and seven of hearts along with the two, which is an obvious hold? Those cards form three-fifths of a straight flush. If you were to imagine the two as the three, four, eight, or nine of hearts, you can imagine all the different cards you could draw that would complete that hand.

That’s an important thing to understand about wild card play. When you get them on the deal, you have to speculate how they might be used. How they actually will be used won’t actually be determined until the draw.

Let’s say that, from that example deal, you kept everything but the five of clubs in an effort to get the straight flush. Imagine that the draw turned out as follows:

You didn’t get the card you needed for the royal flush. But you did get a second six. As a result, the wild card will be transformed into a six to give you three of a kind and a winning hand.

The software of the game will make that transformation for you on the draw. It will do all the math and determine the best way for the card to be used. That takes a little pressure off you when playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker.

Pay Tables for Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

We’re already told you a bit about how the pay tables for Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker are somewhat unique. And we’ve told you that, because of the pay tables, play might be a bit volatile as a result of more payback being tied up in rarely achieved hands.

Volatility won’t bother you so much if you’re planning on playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker over a long period of time with a big bankroll. Just make sure the bankroll is large enough to withstand any rough patches where the rare hands don’t appear often.

Casual players should realize their bankroll can drop quickly playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker. That might not bother you if you’re just hoping to shoot for a big payoff on a single hand. This game certainly provides opportunity for that.

First, let’s look at the full-pay pay table (i.e. the pay table with the highest payback) for Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker.

Jacks or Better Pay Table

Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1632486480
Straight flush918273645
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345

For a little bit of context, here is the full-pay version of Deuces Wild video poker:

Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1530456075
Straight flush918273645
Four of a kind510152025
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345

You can see that the main differences are that Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker includes separate payouts for four deuces with an ace kicker and for five of a kind achieved with just a single wild card.

The Deuces Wild table includes no distinctions for these hands. Four deuces with an ace kicker would just be considered four deuces. And five of a kind is paid the same no matter how it’s achieved.

Because of those special payouts, Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker also gives something back on the lower end. Four of a kind pays off at 4 to 1 on that table, compared to 5 to 1 on a Deuces Wild table. The lower payoff for a common hand is another hallmark of a high-volatility game.

Here are some of the other pay tables that are available under the Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker banner:

Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1530456075
Straight flush1020304050
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1530456075
Straight flush918273645
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1020304050
Straight flush918273645
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1020304050
Straight flush816243240
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces160320480640800
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1020304050
Straight flush714212835
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces100200300400500
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1224364860
Straight flush1020304050
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces100200300400500
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1224364860
Straight flush918273645
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345
Coins/Hands1 coin2 coins3 coins4 coins5 coins
Royal flush25050075010004000
Four deuces with one ace400800120016002000
Four deuces2004006008001000
Five of a kind with one deuces100200300400500
Wild royal flush255075100125
Five of a kind1224364860
Straight flush816243240
Four of a kind48121620
Full House3691215
Flush246810
Straight246810
Three of a kind12345

You’ll notice that these tables often come up short of the full-pay version of Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker in certain hands. These discrepancies affect the payback percentage of the game.

The payback percentage for the full-pay version of Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker sits at 100.4%. In other words, if you were to put $1,000 into a machine and bet all of it, your average return would be $1,004. That’s a $4 profit.

If you’re new to gambling, you might not realize this is an extremely beneficial result. Most casino games come with what is known as the house edge built into play. Basically, the house edge is how casinos and gambling websites stay in business, because it allows them to make a profit at the expense of gamblers.

Any game that eliminates the house edge is highly beneficial to gamblers. But even if you can’t find the full-pay version of Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, you’ll find that several of the other pay tables bring back payback percentages of more than 99%.

Hardcore video poker players should strive for any machine that comes in at higher than 99% payback. You might be losing a little bit over the long haul. But you can make that up through casino rewards and gambling sites perks.

How will you know what the payback percentage for a given Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker pay table will be? Plug the numbers into a video poker calculator. It will come up with a percentage that will let you know whether or not you should be targeting that game.

Strategy For Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

Strategy is an aspect of video poker that is often misunderstood. Many people think they can go with gut feelings or hunches when deciding which cards to hold or discard. They might also think they can predict the cards that will come on the draw based on what happened in previous hands.

In actuality, each specific set of cards that you receive on the deal has an expected value attached to it. Your goal when playing video poker is to make the decision that unlocks the maximum expected value. And there’s only one possible decision that will do this.

Think about expected value in terms of a video poker machine that spits out the exact same deal over and over again. If you were to play the game and make a wrong decision about what to hold and discard, you might occasionally get lucky on the draw.

But if you kept playing this hypothetical machine, one combination of holds and discards would earn you more money than any other. This combination is based both on the probabilities and the payback involved with each winning hand.

That’s what you have to strive for with every possible deal you might receive playing Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker. On the one hand, strategy for this game can be a little bit easier because you know you’ll be holding onto a wild card in all situations.

Yet on the other hand, deciding what you’re going to keep alongside the wild cards can be tricky. Also, if you don’t get a wild card on the deal, you have to be more willing to discard some cards. After all, you want as many chances to draw one of the wild cards left in the deck.

As if all the math of trying to make the right selection weren’t hard enough, you also have to consider that you’d ideally want to make your choices as fast as possible. This is especially true with a game like Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker, where a positive expectation is possible. You’ll want to play as fast as possible to exploit this advantage.

How can you possibly pull all of this together? Get some help. We recommend the following sources of video poker instruction.

Video Poker Training Software

With training software, you can input the totals from the specific Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker pay table that you’ve found. This will ensure you’re getting the proper instruction. You can also decide whether you want to ask for help on all hands or just specific ones that are tricky.

Play Deuces Wild For Fun

Once you have your video poker software set up, you can play hands as if you were playing for real. When your decision on what to hold and discard is incorrect, the software will let you know your mistake. In this way, you will eventually learn perfect play.

Strategy Charts

A strategy chart is set up as a list of possible cards you can receive on a deal. They’re ranked in order of their expected value, based on the specific pay table. When you see the combination that you have in your own deal, you’ll know that these are the cards to hold heading into the draw.

The best way to utilize a Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker strategy chart is to memorize it. If you try to bring it into a casino to help you out, the management might not be too happy. Besides, consulting on every single hand can slow you down.

Pros and Cons of Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

Pros of Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

  • Wild cards are an exciting way to play
  • More chances at high payouts on a single hand
  • Excellent payback percentages for the best pay tables

Cons of Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

  • More volatile than most wild card games
  • Requires a big bankroll to play properly
  • Wild card strategy can be more involved

Conclusion on Super Bonus Deuces Wild Video Poker

Super Bonus Deuces Wild video poker puts a Bonus Poker pay table into a wild card package. It then super-sizes it by adding some more jackpot possibilities. But the fact that it does all this while keeping the payback percentages high makes it an excellent game if you can find it.

This video poker strategy page and the accompanying section have a single goal—to help you get the best odds when gambling at a casino. Video poker, unlike many casino games, offers you at least some degree of control over the odds. Games like roulette and slot machines have no strategy. The decisions you make are essentially meaningless.

Video poker, on the other hand, resembles blackjack. You can use strategic thinking to improve your chances of winning and decrease the house edge. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as both games use a deck of cards to play. Of course, in the case of blackjack, you’re usually looking at a real deck of cards. In video poker, you’re using a virtual deck that’s actually being simulated using a random number generator.

But legitimate video poker games duplicate the odds you’d see if you were using a real deck of cards.

And that’s why you can use a strategy to improve your odds. We talk more about that in the next section.

Why Does Video Poker Have a Strategy?

When you’re playing a slot machine, you have no idea what the probability of a particular symbol coming up on a particular reel is. That probability is determined by the random number generator.

A random number generator is a computer program that constantly cycles through numbers at the rate of thousands of numbers per second. Each number corresponds to a different stop on the reel in a slot machine game. Or in the case of a video poker game, each number corresponds to a playing card.

But since you don’t know anything about the probability of getting a particular symbol on a slot machine game, it’s impossible to make any kind of strategic decision.

In fact, even if you DID know the probabilities of getting each symbol on the reel, you still wouldn’t be able to make a decision that would affect your outcome.

There are no decisions to be made. You put your money in, your spin the reels, and you accept the outcome.

Several, if not most, casino games are like this. You have no way of affecting the odds no matter how smart you are. The odds of winning a single number bet in roulette are 37 to 1, no matter what kind of strategy you use.

That’s why video poker (and blackjack) are different. You DO have the opportunity to make decisions which affect your outcome.

Understanding why requires looking into the math behind the game a little bit.

Expected Return, Payback Percentages & the House Edge

The expected return of a bet, video poker or otherwise, can be calculated if you know the probability of winning and losing. You also need to know how much you stand to win and how much you stand to lose.

You multiply the probability of winning by the amount you’re going to win. You multiply the probability of losing by the amount you’re going to lose. You add those two numbers together to get your overall expectation.

Suppose we set up a really simple gambling game where you’re going to flip a coin. If you guess the correct outcome, you win 25 cents. But if you’re wrong, you lose 50 cents.

In this example you have a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. 50% of 25 cents is 12.5 cents, which is the first part of your equation. 50% of 50 cents is -25 cents. (It’s negative because that’s the amount you lose.)

12.5 cents – 25 cents = -12.5 cents

Your expected loss on that bet is 12.5 cents.

You won’t lose 12.5 cents every time. That would be impossible.

But if you tallied all your net wins and losses over time, and if you played for a long time, your results would eventually start to conform to the mathematical expectation.

Return is usually measured as a percentage. In this case, 12.5 cents is 50% of the original bet, so your expected return is -50%.

That’s an awful bet. Most experienced gamblers wouldn’t take it.

But it’s an example of how the casino gets its edge in every game in the casino.

This same kind of math can be applied to video poker games and to slot machine games to determine a payback percentage. The payback percentage is just the amount of money you expect to win back from the casino for every $100 you wager over a long period of time.

Keep in mind that in the short run, anything can and often will happen. You can win a big jackpot early in your session, and your results won’t look anything like the mathematically expected payback percentage.

But the longer you play, the closer your results will get to the mathematically predicted results. Over an infinite number of trials, you would certainly have results which mirror the mathematical prediction.

The house edge, on the other hand, is the amount of each bet that the house mathematically expects to keep. It’s the opposite of the payback percentage.

The payback percentage added to the house edge always equals 100%. So you can calculate the house edge by subtracting the payback percentage from 100%.

In the case of a full pay Jacks or Better game, the payback percentage is 99.54%. So the house edge is 0.46%.

That means for every $100 you bet, the casino expects you to win $99.54. They expect to win 46 cents.

Those are long term expectations, though. In the short run, anything can happen.

All of that background is necessary for understanding why video poker strategy matters.

Since you know the odds of being dealt a particular hand, and you know the odds of improving a hand, you can compare your choices in a video poker game to go with the choice that has the better expected return.

You’re playing Jacks or Better, and you have 4 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. You could play this hand in a number of ways.

You have a number of options in this example:

  • You could throw all 5 cards away and start over. That’s obviously the play with the lowest expected value.
  • You could throw away all the cards except the pair. In this case, you’re hoping to improve your hand to 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, or a full house.
  • Or you could throw away the card that makes the pair and try to draw the royal flush.

Since you have a pair, you have a 100% chance of winning at least 1 unit. That’s an expected value of $1. But it’s actually a little better than that, because you also have the chance to improve the hand. Let’s just call it an expected value move of $1.50.

But a royal flush has a payout of 800 to 1. The odds of drawing the card you need for that hand are 1 in 47, but any time you get a 46 to 1 shot at an 800 to 1 payout, you should take it. The expected value of that play is huge.

You have a roughly 2% chance of winning $800. That’s $16. You also have a roughly 98% chance of losing $1. That’s -98 cents.

$16 – 98 cents = $15.02, which is a heck of a lot more than $1.50.

The correct choice is clear, even though you’re going to lose this bet more often than not. On the occasions when you do win, your winnings are going to be so large that they’ll make up for all the times you lost the bet and then some.

Not all situations in video poker are that clear. In fact, a human can’t just sit there and work out the correct play in every situation using a pencil and paper.

Luckily, we have computers for that.

You can find a video poker strategy chart for just about any variation available. In fact, you can even find websites which will generate the perfect strategy for you based on the game and the pay table that you input.

Here’s how such a strategy chart works:

  • You get a list of hands.
  • At the top of the list is the best possible hand.
  • You work your way down the list until you find a hand that matches what you have.
  • When you get to that hand, you stop and keep the cards that are listed.

Almost all video poker strategy charts start with a royal flush as the top listed hand. That makes sense. After all, you would never throw away the top paying hand in the game. That would just be silly.

In most games, 4 of a kind and a straight flush will also be at the top of the list—those are usually the top 3 hands with the best payouts.

But the next best hand after that?

You’ll always hold on to 4 cards to a royal flush.

The royal flush is the big paying hand. So you’ll go for that, even if it means breaking up a sure winner.

Free Video Poker Deuces Wild

That’s some strategy advice based on Jacks or Better, but the strategy for Deuces Wild is a little bit different.

For one thing, you’ll always look at lists of potential hands based on how many deuces you have. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is that you never discard a 2.

Then based on how many deuces you have in your hand, you have a list of potential hands to choose from. Start at the top and work your way down.

Another way of thinking about video poker strategy is to think about potentially conflicting hands.

You have 3 cards to a royal flush, but you also have a pair. Do you keep the pair, or do you go for the royal flush?

Bonus Deuces Wild Strategy

Wild

In this case, you keep the pair. Your odds of hitting the royal flush go down exponentially when you need 2 cards to complete your hand.

How do you know that?Probability.

In probability, when you want to know the odds of event A happening AND event B happening at the same time, you multiple the probabilities by each other.

In the event of filling a royal flush, each card has a 1/47 chance of showing up. The odds of getting both cards are 1/47 X 1/47, which is about 1 in 2500. And 800 to 1 payout doesn’t warrant that kind of risk, especially if you’ve got a sure winning in your hand already.

The strategy varies from game to game because the payouts vary from game to game. In Bonus Poker, which is basically just Jacks or Better with a bonus payout for a 4 of a kind, you might be more likely to draw to your 4 of a kind in certain instances.

Deuces Wild Strategy Chart

In Deuces Wild, the presence of the wild card makes a huge difference to how you play your hands. You need much stronger hands to win, but those wild cards make it easier to get those hands. One of the fundamental tenets of Deuces Wild strategy is to never discard a deuce.

Jacks or Better

The basics of Jacks or Better strategy are pretty simple.

First check to see if you have one of the following 3 paying hands:

If you have any of those, keep what you’ve got and collect your winnings.

If you don’t have any of those, check to see if you have 4 cards to a royal flush. If you do, keep those 4 cards and try to hit the royal.

4 cards to a royal flush trumps everything except those 3 hands we mentioned above.

If you don’t have 4 cards to a royal flush, then look to see if you have any of these other “made hands”:

  • Full House
  • Flush
  • Straight
  • 3 of a Kind

If you have any of those, keep it and collect your winnings.

If not, check to see if you have 4 cards to a straight flush. If you do, then draw to that straight flush.

Then check to see if you have one of the following 2 paying hands:

You’ll keep those over the other options below.

Once you get to that point, you’re looking at speculative hands. Your best speculative hand at this point is 3 cards to a royal flush. It’s a long shot, but if you don’t already have one of the other hands listed above, that’s what you should go for.

Then if you have 4 to a flush, try to fill your flush.

If you have a low pair, try to draw to 3 of a kind or better.

A full strategy chart will have several more hands for you to go through, but you get the idea.

Jacks or Better strategy just isn’t that hard. Even though this isn’t a complete strategy chart, you’re probably only giving up a few tenths of a percent of payback percentage following these guidelines.

Our guide to Jacks or Better video poker covers the correct strategy in more detail.

Content

Multihand Bonus Deuces Wild

If you have 4 deuces, you’ll keep them.

If you have 3 deuces, you’ll keep them. You’re hoping for a royal flush.

If you have 2 deuces, you’ll keep both of them. You’ll hope for a 4 of a kind or better, but if you don’t have that, try for a royal flush or a straight flush.

If you only have one deuce, strategy gets a little harder. But it’s still just a list to go down:

  • 4 of a Kind or better
  • 4 to a Royal Flush
  • Full House
  • 4 to a Straight Flush
  • Flush, Straight, or 3 of a Kind
  • 3 to a Royal Flush

And so on.

The payback percentages for Deuces Wild games are all over the place. Unlike Jacks or Better, which has an easy to understand system for adjusting the payback percentage, Deuces Wild pay tables can vary quite a bit from one another.

Your best bet, when choosing a Deuces Wild game, is to use some kind of online tool to determine the payback percentage for the game with the pay table you’re considering.

For a detailed discussion of Deuces Wild strategy, please see our page on Deuces Wild video poker.

The optimal strategy for Bonus Poker, which offers a bonus payout for 4 of a kind hands, is so similar to the optimal strategy for Jacks or Better as to be almost indistinguishable.

If you just used the same strategy, you’d probably be giving up less than 0.2%.

It is good to know how to play Bonus Poker, though, because in many of today’s casinos, it’s the video poker game with the highest payout percentage.

We have an entire page dedicated to Bonus Poker, and it includes detailed strategy advice.

Joker Poker

Joker Poker has some similarities to Deuces Wild, but it’s not as complicated. You’ll only ever see a single joker in the deck, which changes the texture of the possible hands considerably.

You’ll basically be presented with 2 basic strategy charts—one to follow if your hand includes a joker, and one to follow if it doesn’t. The differences are subtle in some cases, but it’s not too complicated.

We offer a full page on Joker Poker, too, which also includes a detailed discussion of the correct strategy for playing that game.

Video poker strategy resembles basic strategy in blackjack in many ways. They both represent the optimal way of playing every possible hand you could get.

Of course, the differences are obvious, too. Your goals in video poker are quite different from your goals in blackjack.

Most video poker strategy is just presented as a list. You start at the top, work your way down, and stop when you get to the hand that matches what you’re holding in your hand. Then you keep the appropriate cards and move on.

We offer detailed strategies for almost all of the video poker games on our site on the appropriate pages. Please visit this page for a complete list of all the games we cover.

You may also be interested the following pages. These cover a range of subjects related to video poker strategy.

Video Poker Strategy Articles

  • Video Poker Trainers
  • Video Poker for Winner
  • Video Poker Bankroll
  • Video Poker Books
  • Video Poker Cheat Sheets
  • Video Poker Calculators
  • Video Poker Comps
  • Video Poker Double Up Feature
  • Video Poker EV (Expected Value)
  • Video Poker Hands and Hand Analyzers
  • Video Poker House Edge
  • Video Poker Lessons
  • Video Poker Odds and Probability
  • Video Poker Royal Flush Odds & Strategy
  • Video Poker Risk of Ruin and Variance
  • Video Poker Tutorial
  • Bob Dancer: Video Poker Expert
  • Jean Scott: The Frugal Gambler