I was today days old when I learned the video poker machine flashing the biggest bonus number on its paytable isn’t necessarily the better machine to sit down at. This is the seventh post in the series on how to actually play the games this site has already toured the venues for (Three Card Poker, Discovery #146; Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Discovery #147; Craps, Discovery #148; Roulette, Discovery #149; Blackjack, Discovery #150; Baccarat, Discovery #151). Video poker is different from everything else in this series: there’s no dealer, no other players, and no house-dictated draw rules — every decision on every hand is entirely yours, which means the games with the flashiest paytables can quietly reward the wrong instincts.
Two games, almost one strategy:
Jacks or Better and Bonus Poker are the two most common video poker pay tables on a casino floor, and the two games are played almost identically: you’re dealt five cards, you choose which to hold and which to discard, and you draw once to replace the rest. Per a Las Vegas Advisor comparison, a player who learns Jacks or Better’s strategy and simply applies it to a Bonus Poker machine gives up only 0.009 percentage points of return — a perfect Bonus Poker player returns 99.167%, versus 99.158% playing Jacks or Better strategy on the same machine. The actual differences that remain come down to a handful of close calls: holding two unpaired high cards (like King-Queen) over a three-card straight-flush draw in a few specific spots where Jacks or Better would do the opposite, and holding a single King alone over a three-card straight-flush draw with King-Ten plus a third card. Learn one game’s strategy and you’ve effectively learned both.
The one rule that matters more than either strategy chart:
Before any hand-by-hand strategy, one rule overrides everything else on both games: always bet the maximum 5 coins. On a full-pay machine, the royal flush pays 800-for-1 at five coins bet, but only 250-for-1 per coin at anything less — a jump no other hand in the paytable gets, and it’s the single biggest factor in the game’s long-run return. Betting four coins or fewer to “save money” on a bad hand actually makes the game worse, not safer. Past that, both games share the same pat-hand backbone: never draw away from an already-made straight, flush, full house, straight flush, or four of a kind, and a pair of jacks or better is always worth holding over a four-card flush or straight draw, not just a backup if the draw misses.
Where the two paytables actually diverge:
The real difference between the games isn’t strategy, it’s the printed paytable. Full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better pays every four-of-a-kind the same flat 25-for-1, regardless of rank, and returns 99.54% with optimal play — named for its full house (9-for-1) and flush (6-for-1) payouts. 8/5 Bonus Poker instead tiers its four-of-a-kind payout by rank: four aces pay 80-for-1, four 2s through 4s pay 40-for-1, and four 5s through kings pay a plain 25-for-1, same as Jacks or Better. That “80-for-1 on aces” is the number printed in bigger type on the machine’s glass, and it’s real — but Bonus Poker pays for it by cutting its own full house to 8-for-1 and its flush to 5-for-1 (hence “8/5 Bonus Poker”), two hands that come up far more often than any four of a kind. Add it up and 8/5 Bonus Poker returns 99.17% with optimal play — a half a percentage point worse than full-pay Jacks or Better, despite the bigger number on the glass.
So the actual decision at the machine isn’t “which strategy do I need to learn” — it’s “which paytable is printed on this particular machine,” since the two games ask almost the same thing of you. Check the full house and flush numbers before the four-of-a-kind numbers: 9/6 beats 8/5 even though 8/5’s aces bonus looks bigger, and either way, five coins is the only bet size that gets you the posted return at all. More of this site’s walk through the games it’s spent dozens of posts standing in front of without explaining is still to come.