Once you’ve identified the good machines and decided to sit down and play, the next step is to use an expert strategy. Don’t expect to play flawlessly the first time you sit down.
Because the different machines all have their own special strategies, you should stick with one type of machine until you’ve thoroughly understood and mastered its specific expert strategies.
Once again, Jacks-or-better is the most basic choice, and by mastering its expert strategy, you’ll have a better chance at the more complicated strategies of other video poker machines. The following strategies can be used for progressive Jacks-or-better and even bonus poker without losing much of an advantage.
The most important concept to grasp at the beginning is the need to eliminate costly mistakes. Most of those mistakes are made by confusing video poker with live poker – whereas in fact we know that there are key differences – and can be generalized as follows:
|
NO. OF |
ODDS OF |
CASH AT STAKE |
|
DOUBLES |
WINNING |
AFTER WIN |
|
1 |
50.00% |
£10 |
|
2 |
25.00% |
£20 |
|
3 |
12.5% |
£40 |
|
4 |
6.25% |
£80 |
|
5 |
3.13% |
£160 |
|
6 |
1.56% |
£320 |
|
7 |
0.78% |
£640 |
|
8 |
0.39% |
£1,280 |
|
9 |
0.19% |
£2,560 |
|
10 |
0.09% |
£5,120 |