Your hand
How you are doing
Your last mistakes
Every hand is checked against all 32 ways to hold it, over every possible draw from the 47 cards left, so "best" means the highest average return, not a rule of thumb. Returns are per coin bet with five coins in (royal flush pays 800 per coin). Keys: 1 to 5 hold, D or Enter to draw, Enter for the next hand. Play money only: your score stays in this browser.
- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
This free video poker trainer deals you a hand, lets you choose your holds and then tells you, exactly, whether you got it right. Hold the wrong cards and it shows the best play and what your choice cost, such as “−4.3% of the bet”. The score panel keeps track across the session, so after a hundred hands you know how close to perfect strategy you really are.
How the video poker trainer checks you
Every hand has 32 possible holds, from keeping all five to throwing all five away. The CasinoCalcs trainer works out the average return of every one of them over every draw from the 47 cards left: up to 1.5 million draws for a five-card redraw. The hold with the highest average is the right answer. That’s why it can catch the mistakes rules of thumb miss, like keeping a high pair over four to a flush in Jacks or Better (correct) or breaking a pair of 2s in Deuces Wild (never, they’re wild).
The feedback names each hold in plain words, four to a flush, a low pair, two high cards, and lists the three best holds with their average return, so you can see how close the runner-up was. Keys 1 to 5 hold cards and D draws, which makes video poker practice quick once your fingers know where they are.
The mistakes that matter most are usually the big ones on rare hands. Keeping a made flush instead of breaking it for four to a royal looks safe, and it gives up more than 12 bets: the flush pays 6 per coin, the royal draw averages 18.4. Throwing away a low pair to keep a lone king costs about a third of a bet, which sounds small until you see how often that hand comes up.
Practise in this order
Start with 9/6 Jacks or Better, which returns 99.54% with perfect play. Play until your mistake cost sits under half a percent, then move to the 8/5 version so you learn which plays change with the pay table. Deuces Wild is a different game: four wild cards change almost every decision, so expect your score to drop at first. Changing the game resets the score.
| Your mistake cost | What it means |
|---|---|
| Under 0.2% | Close to perfect. You’ve learned the chart. |
| 0.2% to 1% | A few close calls wrong. Check them in the strategy chart. |
| 1% to 3% | Typical casual play. Worth more than choosing a better pay table. |
| Over 3% | Big errors, usually on draws to straights and flushes. |
From practice to the real game
The trainer’s score is about decisions, not results. You can play perfectly and lose for an hour, because a royal flush lands about once in 40,000 hands. For the full printable strategy, open the video poker strategy chart; to compare pay tables, the video poker calculator; and to watch a long session play out, the video poker simulator. Blackjack players can do the same kind of drill in the blackjack trainer. Every game we have a trainer for is on the casino game trainers page.
Perfect strategy still loses on most pay tables. BeGambleAware.org has free support and tools.