Casino Video Poker

It is believed that many video poker variants offer players a return of above 100%, but in reality how often can you expect to get those royal straight flush hands? The video poker games offer the casino player the edge over the casino. Full Pay Jacks or Better video poker offers a return of 99.50% on condition you play according to proper video poker strategy. However, realistically you will only hit a royal straight flush once every 40,000 hands, and honestly no player will sit down at a poker machine and play through that many hands.

In this scenario what is the probability of getting those royal straight flushes? Well, the machine starts out by giving you 5 cards, which are dealt randomly from a deck of 52 cards. From those 52 cards you have the possibility of receiving 2,598,960 different hands. Only 4 of those hands are likely to be royal straight flush hands – one for every suit. In other words, in your wildest of dreams you can’t expect to receive a royal flush without drawing new cards to your poker hand. 4 royal straights every 2,598,960 hands amounts to 1 royal straight flush every 649,740 hands.

This proves that video poker is an impulsive game and in the long run your odds of beating the casino are more or less even. But your bankroll will go up and down like a roller coaster, and maybe that’s one reason players tend to prefer blackjack – a game that does not have this type of variance in the payouts and also short run expected return.