Make Money Playing Video Poker
Playing video poker online for real money is fun and exciting. It is one of the few casino games which, under the right circumstances, can be beaten. The first step to overcome the game and win money is to find an online casino and make a deposit.
- Online Poker For Play Money
- Video Poker Games For Money
- Can You Make A Living Playing Video Poker
- Make A Living Playing Poker
- Make Money Playing Online Poker
- Can You Make Money On Video Poker
Online video poker continues to grow in popularity, especially right now as gamblers look for some way to get exciting betting action going when casinos and sports have been shut down. It’s one of the rare casino games where players have a legitimate chance to break even or make a profit over the long haul. Read all about our favorite tips on how to make a profit playing online video poker.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about the basics of online video poker on this site. For casual players, those basics might be enough. If you’re just about gambling on video poker for fun and hoping to maybe getting lucky with a jackpot or two while playing the game every once and a while, you don’t need to dive too deep.
Video poker is one of those games. First, however, you have to know the right things to do to give yourself a chance at that profit.
When you do cross over from free play video poker to real money games, you will want to use banking options that you can trust. Putting money into your online casino account with a trusted payment. Video poker is a single-player video game that functions much like a slot machine; most video poker machines play draw poker, where the player bets, a hand is dealt, and the player can discard and replace cards. Payout is dependent on the hand resulting after the draw and the player's initial bet.
To do that, you have to have a deeper understanding of what makes video poker tick. First of all, you have to figure out which specific video poker games and pay tables are the most beneficial to you. You also have to understand concepts like volatility and what it means to your bankroll.
On top of that, you also have to learn how to play the game with perfect strategy. Finally, you also have to be able to compliment your winnings by earning rewards from some of the top gambling sites.
There is no guarantee that following these tips will ensure you of making a profit playing video poker. But using them will certainly put you in the ballpark. And once you’re in that ballpark, you can legitimately hope that a steady profit playing online video poker might come your way.
Understand the Concepts
Online Poker For Play Money
Without digging into the concepts behind how video poker pays out each player, you’ll have a hard time figuring out how to make a profit playing the game. With that in mind, let’s take a look at them.
Payback Percentage and House Edge
Did you ever stop to wonder why casinos or online gambling sites don’t panic every time someone either hits a jackpot or goes on a long winning streak? It’s because they know that, in the long run, they are still in the catbird’s seat when it comes to beating the player. And the reason for that is the house edge.
There is a house edge built into just about any online gambling game you might undertake. It is calculated by subtracting the player’s expected payback percentage from 100.
In other words, if a player has a payback percentage of 98, the house edge is 2 percent (100 minus 98). The house edge ensures that, over time, the player will lose and the casino or online site (the house) will win.
The house edge exists because it is baked into the rules of each game and the probabilities of winning and losing. In the case of video poker, you can calculate your payback percentage and, in turn, the house edge, by combining the probabilities of achieving winning poker hands during play with the payback for those hands as listed on the pay table. Or you can just seek out the information online if you don’t want to do the math.
In a way, that transparency is a good thing, since you know what you’re getting from video poker. Compare that to slot machines online, where you have no idea how often winning spins will show up, which means you have no idea what the payback percentage and house edge will be.
In general, online video poker house edge is one of the lowest around. Your goal is to make sure that it is as low as possible before settling in to play.
Online Video Poker Volatility
Volatility ties in with payback percentage and house edge in that it is built right into each online video poker game. The difference comes in how it manifests itself.
When you’re talking about payback percentage, you are usually talking about the end point of your game. For instance, you might say, “I started with $1,000 in my bankroll and, after betting it all, ended up with $900 remaining. Therefore, my payback percentage is 90 for this session (since 90 divided by 100 is .90.)”
But what about while you’re playing the game? You might have had one part of the game when your bankroll was up $100 from where it began. And there might have been another part when it was down $200.
This up-and-down ride is the volatility. Some people also use the term variance to describe this phenomenon.
Why Is Volatility Important?It affects how you to have to think about your bankroll when trying to make a profit playing video poker. If you have an online video poker game that is low in volatility, it means that you can usually play for a long time without your bankroll tending to move too far in either direction. As a result, you can get away with a small bankroll.
The flipside is a high-volatility game which can cause your bankroll to rise and fall in extremes at a rapid pace. If you start with a small bankroll in a game like this and hit one of those sequences where your bankroll goes into freefall, you could lose it all. And, as a result, you won’t get to benefit from the inevitable rise back up that would have happened.
Basically, you can think of payback percentage as the destination at the end of a video poker session. Volatility is the journey that it takes to get there.
Short-Term Versus Long-Term
This is a crucial part of the equation when it comes to house edge, payback percentage and volatility. These figures won’t be accurate until you’ve played enough for the statistical probabilities to take hold.
For Example:Imagine that you’re playing an online video poker game with a payback percentage of 99 and that it’s generally considered a low volatility game.
You play nine hands at $10 a hand and lose every one. That puts your payback percentage at zero and makes your volatility high for that session.
On the tenth hand, you are dealt a royal flush. Suddenly, your bankroll skyrockets, sending your payback percentage well over 100. Your volatility is also now through the roof, since you went from $90 below your original bankroll to somewhere around $8000 above after the royal flush.
Does that mean that the payback percentage figures and volatility estimations were wrong? Not at all. You just didn’t play long enough for them to take hold.
It’s a simple statistical concept known as sample size. A small sample size is not reliable because of luck being the driving factor in the overall outcome. But as you play video poker more and more often, your luck will even out and you can expect results similar to what the payback percentage and volatility measurements say.
What’s the lesson behind this? If you really plan to make a profit playing video poker over the long haul, you have to be patient. You could struggle with bad luck in the early going, which would put stress on your bankroll.
Use the volatility figures to determine how much of a bankroll you’ll need to avoid losing it all before the luck can even out. The higher the bankroll, the more you should have in your initial bankroll.
Then you just have to be prepared for a lot of video poker play. Once you’ve played enough, your results will be predictable. That’s your goal, especially if you have found a beneficial online video poker game.
Choosing the Right Online Video Poker Game
To make a profit, you have to turn the house edge into a positive for you. That means pushing the payback percentage over 100.
In the world of casino video poker, there are a few games and pay tables which return over 100 percent. They are hard to find, but they do exist.
These 100-percent games do not exist in the world of online video poker. The best you can hope to do is to find a game that returns over 99 percent.
When you find such a game, you can usually make up your losses through the benefits that top gambling sites offer to players for signing up and for frequent play. Once you climb up over that 100 percent mark with consistency, you’ll be making a profit.
Video Poker Games For Money
Take a look at the pay table below:
Jacks or Better
| Coins/Hands | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| 4 of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| 3 of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| 2 pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
This pay table is known as full-pay Jacks or Better, meaning it is the highest-paying version of that pay table. Jacks or Better is the most popular of all video poker games, both in casinos and online. As a result, you can expect to find the game easily.
This pay table can be expected to pay back 99.54 percent to a player using ideal strategy (more on that below.) That is an excellent rate and one that, with the right rewards attached, can give you hope of a long-term online video poker profit.
Can You Make A Living Playing Video Poker
But if you’re not paying attention, you might play a Jacks or Better pay table with slightly different payback.
Take a look at the following two pay tables:
| Coins/Hands | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| 4 of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 40 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| 3 of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| 2 pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Coins/Hands | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| 4 of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| 3 of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| 2 pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
They look pretty similar to the full-pay table above that returned a favorable amount, right? But can you spot the difference?
The top pay table only offers 8 to 1 payback on the full house, down from 9 to 1. And the lower pay table offers 5 to 1 payback on the flush, down from 6 to 1.
Make A Living Playing Poker
These might seem like subtle differences. But, in both cases, they are enough to bring the payback percentage down a full percentage point into the 98 percent range.
At 98 percent, you probably wouldn’t be able to earn enough in rewards from online video poker sites to compensate for what you would be expected to lose. Playing either one of these pay tables probably won’t allow you to make a long-term profit playing online video poker.
The lesson here is to pay close attention to your pay tables when choosing your online video poker game. If you really want to make a profit, you have to make sure you’re using the pay tables that do indeed come in at just a little below 100 percent in payback percentage.
Playing With Perfect Strategy
Once you’ve identified the right pay table to give you ideal payback percentage, you have to learn to play it with perfect strategy. And we do mean perfect. Any mistake that you make will hurt your chances.
If you’re new to video poker, you might think that you can come up with your video poker strategy on the fly. You might believe that, with a little knowledge of poker hands, you can handle the decisions you have to make.
You’d probably be wrong, unless you’re some kind of math genius. Think about it: In each video poker hand, you have 32 different possibilities when it comes to the cards you want to hold and/or discard. Of those, only one is the right mathematical play.
How is this determined? Let’s assuming we’re playing the Jacks or Better pay table above.
Take a look at the following deal:
- Six of hearts
- Ten of clubs
- Jack of hearts
- Queen of hearts
- King of hearts
Which is the right play? It’s a tough one, right?
You have four hearts, so you’re one shy of a flush. In addition, you have a ten through king, one shy of a straight. Finally, with the jack, queen and king of hearts, you’re two cards shy of the royal flush, which is the highest-paying hand in the entire game.
When you think about correct strategy in online video poker, you have to take the long-term view in the same way that you would with payback percentage or volatility. Imagine that you played this hand an infinite number of times.
As you play the hand over and over, there would be times where you received draws that benefitted the flush, other times the straight, and still other times the royal flush. But the probabilities and the payback totals dictate that only one combination of holds and discards will maximize the value of the hand.
In this case, the correct play is to hold the jack, queen, king of hearts while dropping the others. If you played this hand in any other way, luck might mask the results for a while. But, ultimately, only the correct play can ensure you of the maximum value.
Essentially, that’s the process that needs to be undertaken for every single combination of cards on the deal that you get. And trying to figure out the math for all those countless combinations would be next to impossible.
Getting Help on Strategy
Luckily, you don’t have to undertake this process yourself. There are resources out there, like strategy charts or video poker training software, that will do all the math for you. All you have to do Is drink in the results.
Make Money Playing Online Poker
It might take you a while to do that. A strategy chart requires a lot of memorization. Meanwhile, video poker software requires you to play hands over and over until you have the right plays down without having to think about them.
Neither process will be easy, and both will take time. But taking that time is the only way to ensure that you’re playing to the payback percentage that is attached to each pay table. And that, in turn, is the only way to make a profit playing online video poker.
Conclusion
Can You Make Money On Video Poker
To recap our tips for making a profit on online video poker:
- Learn about payback percentage, house edge, and volatility
- Choose a pay table with a beneficial payback percentage
- Learn ideal strategy for that pay table
If you take the time to check all three off your list, you can legitimately hope to make a profit playing online real money video poker. It might not be the biggest profit in the world. But when you consider that you’re looking at flat-out losses no matter what when playing most other online gambling games, it’s not that bad at all.
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