Video Poker Payback Percentages

Dear Mark,
Normally I play Jacks-or-better video poker. I am always on the hunt for 9/6 machines, which by the way are getting very tough to find, or those with an 8/5 paytable. The casino where I play also has 7/5 and 6/5 machines. How much is the player giving up if they play on machines that pay less for a full house and a flush than 9/6? Barb D.

With video poker, Barb, you can actually see the price and financial return you can expect when playing the game. That's why I've used more than my share of ink writing about shopping for value and playing on video poker machines with the best paytables.

Paytables, or pay schedules, which are always posted somewhere on the machine, tell you what each winning hand will pay for the number of coins played. Casinos can "loosen" or "tighten" the return of a game by manipulating the number of coins won on certain pay categories. For Jacks-or-better, it's the full house/flush numbers that are the primary indicator of a machine's payback percentage.

A 9/6 machine makes the payback, or return of 9 units or a full house and 6 units for a flush, with one coin inserted. A 9/6 Jacks-or-better paytable should look like this:

Royal Flush	250
Straight Flush	50
Four of a Kind	25
Full House	9
Flush	6
Straight	4
Three of a Kind	3
Two Pair	2
Jacks or Better	1

One caveat though, Barb: the payback percentages listed below are based on thousands of hands of video poker, and include hitting an elusive royal flush. They are not based on your personal gambling timeline such as downing two Bloody Mary's or burning through a roll of quarters.

A 6/5 machine (six for a full house, five for a flush) returns 95.00%; a 7/5 machine 96.15%; an 8/5, 97.30%; an 8/6, 98.39%; a 9/5, 98.45%; and that phantom 9/6 machine 99.54%.

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