Due to the random nature of video poker games, there is no real way of knowing if any single game or machine is about to pay out. Each time you select a stake to play for and then click or tap onto the deal button five cards are randomly chosen and then dealt out to you.
As such any hand you do decide to play off could be a winning or losing one, and ultimately it will be down to luck whether you win or lose.
However, thanks to the fact that video poker games have some of the highest payout percentages, and as there is a small element of skill involved in how you play off you initial five cards, there are some strategies that you can adopt when playing such games that could increase your winning chances.
With that in mind we shall now take a look at the best video poker games you should be playing and also how you should be playing those games irrespective of whether you play them online, in a land based casino or even play them on a mobile phone!
High Paying Pay Tables and Auto Hold
What you should first do to increase your chances of having a winning video poker game playing session is to pick out and play only the variants that come with the highest paying pay tables which in turn have been set to return the very highest payout percentages.
The standard pay tables attached to games such as Jacks or Better video poker for example will return a payout percentage of a very high 99.54%. However, to get anywhere near that RTP you must play off your initial five card hand perfectly using the very best strategy.
To ensure that you never hold or discard the wrong cars when playing video poker games what we would always suggest you do is to play a variant offering you the auto hold option setting.
If you come across such a variant and turn on the auto hold then the game will hold the best cards for you automatically when your initial five cards have been dealt out to you, and that takes away all of the guesswork in regards to which cards you should hold on each hand and which cards if any you should discard too.
Average Progressive Jackpot Value
You are also going to come across a handful of video poker games that you can play on which you have the chance of winning a progressive jackpot, and the first thing you should do when playing those games is to make sure that you wager the correct amount of coins per hands to activate the jackpot element of the pay table.
That will usually mean that you are going to have to pay for five coin hands, so always check the pay table and if you are required to have to wager maximum coin bets on each hand to have any chance of winning the progressive jackpot make sure you play them that way!
Another thing to be aware of is he average jackpot amount won by players playing each individual progressive jackpot game. That way you will know when a jackpot is overdue and that would be the ideal time to play such games.
Take for example the Microgaming designed Jackpot Deuces video poker game that games jackpot is won average won when it reaches £35,560 and is won on average every 30 days too. So make sure that you keep track of it jackpot and then play it when the jackpot is over that average payout amount!
Conclusion
You will often find you can get a much longer gaming session when you choose to play video poker games for thanks to their very high payout percentages, if you do play optimally you can often recycle your bankroll many times on a single session.
You will of course always have the very real chance of winning the jackpot on any video poker game you play, but double check to see if the jackpot payout is enhanced if you play with five coin hands in play.
If so then you should set the coin value settings in such a way that you can comfortably afford to play those video poker games with maximum bet hands in play and that in turn will then see you having a chance of winning the jackpot attached to each game.
You can earn plenty of comp points playing real money video poker games but if you choose to play them online or on a mobile phone you should check to see if any bonuses you are about to claim or have claimed can be used on those games, as not all casinos will allow you to do so!