A casino video poker machine is a game that involves deciding which cards to keep and which ones to discard. It is a game that can be beat with the right strategy and is a great alternative to slots. The best part about video poker is that you can actually see your expected financial return, something that isn’t possible with roulette or slot machines.
Before you can determine how much your casino video poker table is worth, it’s important to know the different pay tables and payouts of each hand combination. A pay table is a chart that shows the payouts for the different winning hands in a given game. The pay tables of each machine can vary between casinos and even within different games.
The royal flush, for instance, is the highest paying hand in most video poker variations. It pays out at a ratio of 800 to 1 when you wager five coins on the hand. If you wager fewer than five coins, the pay off will be significantly less. The reason for this is that if you play a few coins instead of the maximum number, you’re giving up so much expected value that the hand will still have a negative house edge even with the high payout.
In order to make the most money from your video poker experience, you should always opt for a game that offers the highest return to player percentage. You can find these by checking the pay table on a particular machine or online. Moreover, you should never risk a low return to player percentage by playing a hand for less than its full payout value. It is always worth keeping the cards that have the highest value in your hand, even if they are lower scoring pairs. The long term expected returns of these types of hands are always higher than those of other hands.
