A Historical Peek At Video Poker

Draw poker and 5 card stud were the usual gambling card games on the paddle wheel boats of the Mississippi as well as in the bars of the long forgotten West in the era of the 1800's. By the time the 1900's rolled around, folks all over the United States were playing similar games of poker on weekend nights with family and friends.
Despite the growing popularity, you had to have played poker quite frequently and have a clear understanding of the game before you would go into a card room. That image probably remained true until video poker was brought onto the scene in the late 1970's. Here was a up-to-date, entertaining and quite simple computer driven game that you could play alone without being intimidated. It immediately became an enormous hit with patrons of casinos across the country.
The initial video machines showed up in Las Vegas in about 1976. These fresh machines had limited payouts but did offer a $1,500 payout for a royal flush on the dollar machines if the maximum five coins were inserted. As soon as the machine manufacturers increased the payouts (for instance, to full house payout levels of 8 or 9 coins), player interest improved considerably and popularity of the video poker games began to skyrocket.
Today, casino floor managers are moving mature slots out and installing fresh video games on a regular basis. Video poker machines have evolved into scores of different games from the simple draw poker beginnings. Wild card versions such as Joker Poker and Deuces Wild are now offered as well as many bonus games which pay higher amounts for various 4 of a kind combinations.
Video poker is not only quite popular with casino customers; it's also one of the less risky games in the casino for players, since winning does not rely entirely on luck.

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Important Tips on How to Play Video Poker

Video poker is the game for you if you are looking for purely mathematical thrill at the casino. However, early on, it is important for you to know how to play one. Many people, who play video poker, do so because it bears resemblance to many other poker games that they have played like "Texas Hold'Em", Omaha, Stud and most of all, Five Card Draw. These poker games are different from Video Poker in one respect: Usually, poker games have many players in a game. Video poker has only one player - and that is you.
So here is how to play video poker: Think of it as a solitaire variant of Five Card Draw. You first choose a coin value, for which you want to play, then you bet a certain number of coins, then you receive five cards (first draw). You can choose to discard some of the cards, or even all of them. Then you follow the procedures to receive new cards (second draw). You get no more draws beyond the second draw. To determine how much you win, each video poker machine shows the payout table for the different types of poker hands. The casino profits from video poker machines because there are different payout tables for different pokermachines.
That gives players who want to find out how to play poker a ray of hope. Clearly there can be machines which, in the long run, are easier to beat than others? What's good in video poker is that you can control your fate and you have no opponent at all, so you don't have to bring those sophisticated moves that you may have been always using while playing regular poker games with other people. What is important for you to know are (1) the different poker hand rankings and (2) knowing the odds that you'll make highly desirable hands.
Knowing the hand rankings is a "no-brainer" piece of advice. To refresh you, the different poker hands from lowest to highest are: high card (when no pair is formed), one pair (two cards of the same rank), two pair (two cards of one rank and two cards of a another rank), three of a kind (three cards of the same rank), straight (five cards in sequence; an Ace can be high or low), flush (five cards of the same suit), full house (a pair and a three of a kind combined), four of a kind (four cards of the same rank), straight flush (five suited cards in sequence), and royal flush (a Ten, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace, all suited). Many poker machines require the minimum hand to be a Pair of Jacks or better for you to win something.
Now that you know the hand rankings, you should know the odds of forming hands when you have five cards already. Odds are highly situation specific, so here are some tips to keep in mind so that you can make a long-run profit: (1) If you already have one pair, discard three cards so that you can attempt for a three of a kind instead of keeping a kicker. But if you have a two pair, don't discard a pair and the unpaired card; only discard the unpaired card so that you can draw to get a possible full house. (2) If you have a pair and an open-ended straight draw (such as 10-10-9-8-7), don't aim for the straight. Aim for the three of a kind by discarding the three unpaired cards. (3) If you have a hand that could conceivably not win anything, then discard all your cards and draw anew. Don't keep any lone Ace, King or whatever.

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