A video poker calculator answers the question most players skip: how good is this machine? Two Jacks or Better games can look identical and differ by four and a half percent. This free calculator reads the paytable, shows the return with perfect play and turns it into money: at £1.25 a hand and 600 hands an hour, a 9/6 game costs about £3.45 an hour, and a 6/5 game costs £37.50.
Nothing else changes between those two machines. Same cards, same speed, same strategy. Only the two numbers for a full house and a flush.
Video poker calculator: reading the paytable
Jacks or Better games are named after what a full house and a flush pay per coin. Everything else on the table is usually the same:
| Paytable | Full house | Flush | Return, perfect play |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 (full pay) | 9 | 6 | 99.54% |
| 8/6 | 8 | 6 | 98.39% |
| 8/5 | 8 | 5 | 97.30% |
| 7/5 | 7 | 5 | 96.15% |
| 6/5 | 6 | 5 | 95.00% |
Look at the full house line on the machine’s pay screen before anything else. If it says 9 and the flush says 6, you’ve found one of the best games in the casino. If the paytable doesn’t match any of these, choose “Custom paytable” and enter the pays yourself. The calculator estimates the return from 9/6 hand frequencies, which lands within a few hundredths of a percent.
Jacks or Better strategy chart
The return figures assume you hold the right cards every hand. Work down this list and hold the first thing that matches:
- Royal flush, straight flush or four of a kind
- Four cards to a royal flush
- Full house, flush, straight or three of a kind
- Four cards to a straight flush
- Two pair
- A pair of jacks or better
- Three cards to a royal flush
- Four cards to a flush
- A low pair (2s to 10s)
- Four cards to an open-ended straight
- Two suited high cards (J, Q, K, A)
- Three cards to a straight flush
- Two unsuited high cards (if you have three, keep the two lowest)
- A suited 10 with a J, Q or K
- One high card
- Nothing: draw five new cards
Two rules surprise people. Break a made flush or straight when you hold four to a royal, because the royal pays 800 per coin. And keep a low pair over four to an outside straight. This simple list plays within a fraction of a percent of perfect strategy, which is far closer than guessing.
Always play five coins
The royal flush pays 250 per coin on one to four coins and 800 per coin at five. That jump is worth about 1.4% of the return. If £1.25 a hand is too much, find a 5p machine and play five coins of 5p rather than one coin of 25p. You’ll see a royal about once every 40,391 hands, which at 600 an hour is roughly 67 hours of play. Most of the return comes from the small pays in between.
Even a 99.54% game takes a little every hour. Decide your budget before the first hand. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.