Playing video poker at online casinos offers a more stable
inventory of payouts than playing land-based machines. In
other words, if you were to play video poker in a brick 'n
mortar casino, you would be confronted with banks of
video poker machines, many of which would offer
different payout returns on winning hands. Amidst
these banks of machines, it would not be uncommon to
find a full pay machine sitting directly next to a
partial pay machine in a land-based gambling
destination.
On the internet, however, players will
generally find more similar payouts from machine to
machine. This is not to say that payouts will not vary
between video poker game varieties or between two casinos. In addition to
different varieties of video poker, payout tables will be
variable due to the gaming software powering them. For
instance, payouts for Microgaming powered games of Jacks
or Better are different than they are for games of Jacks
or Better powered by Playtech.
In general, the payouts for
hands of Jacks or Better, Two Pairs, Three of a Kind and
Straights are all the same for the top software providers.
When getting to the higher hands, this is where the
payouts generally make a machine full pay or partial. For
example, the next two hands beyond a Straight are Flushes
and Full Houses, and are normally used in conjunction to
designate partial and full pay machines. A full-pay
machine for Jacks or Better is said to pay 9-6 (nine coins
for a Full House and six coins for a Flush). Partial pay
Jacks or Better video poker machines often pay 8-5, which
is obviously lower than 9-6.
However, there are some
online casino sites that offer 13-4 on a Flush and Full
House. While this may look like a better out, it is
actually not. Even though the payout for the Full House is
better, the odds of hitting it are much worse than the
Flush. The expected value of return simply is lower than a
9-6 machine, which gives an approximate expected value of
return at 99.5%. Some machines may even offer 9-6 -
appearing to be full pay machines - but actually pay less
on smaller ranked hands. Therefore, when looking for a
full pay machine, players need to look at the entire
payout table.
