Some of my favorite tales from readers are those of back-to-back jackpots – or at least jackpots within a few plays of each other. They don’t happen very often. A 1 in 40,000 chance of drawing a royal flush in video poker translates to a 1 in 160 million chance of back-to-back royals. But given enough trials, anything that can happen eventually will, and there are plenty of trials in casinos.
I’ve been playing video poker for more than 25 years, and I’ve had royal flushes on penny, nickel, quarter, dollar and $2 games.
Video poker is a much different game than table poker. In video poker, you’re playing draw poker, is rare to nonexistent on the tables. You’re not playing against other players, you don’t have to try to read anyone else’s hand and you don’t have to evaluate whether to raise, call or fold.
Video poker players in the know understand that on most games, payback percentages are changed by altering the returns on full houses and flushes. A “9-6” Jacks or Better game, where full houses pay 9-for-1 and flushes 6-for-1, returns 99.5 percent with expert play. If instead you see 8-5 Jacks or Better, meaning full houses pay 8-for-1 and flushes 5-for-1, then the average return is 97.3 percent with expert play.
However, when progressive jackpots are involved, even a game with a lower pay table can have high average returns.
When you play multihand video poker games such as Triple Play, Five Play and Ten Play Poker, part of the attraction is that you get multiple chances to make a high-paying hand on the draw. Hold two pairs, and maybe you don’t pull the full house on hand No. 1, but the possibilities are still there on the draw for the second hand, or third, or however many you play.
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