If you’ve been to a casino, chances are you’ve seen or even played a video poker machine. Video poker first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a television-like monitor with a solid-state central processing unit. The first models appeared at the same time that the first personal computers were created, in the mid-1970s, although they were quite primitive by modern standards.

Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stands for Si Redd’s Coin Machines, and which evolved over time to become International Game Technology, introduced Draw Poker in 1979. Less intimidating than playing table games. Today, video poker enjoys a prominent place in the game rooms of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to frequent the local casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better odds, although this was more common in the 1990s as casinos across the country have recently trimmed their pay tables and/or only offer 25 cent machines. or more.

The game begins with a player placing a bet of one or more credits, inserting money (or on newer machines, a barcoded paper ticket with credit) into the machine, and then pressing the “Deal” button to draw cards. The player then has the opportunity to keep or discard one or more of the cards in exchange for a new card drawn from the same virtual deck. After the draw, the machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout if the hand matches one of the winning hands on the published payout schedule.

On a classic video poker machine, payouts start with a minimum hand of a pair of jacks. The paytables allocate the payout for hands based partially on how rare they are and also based on the total theoretical return that the game operator chooses to offer.

Some machines offer progressive jackpots for the royal flush (and sometimes for other rare hands as well), which encourages players to play more coins and more often.

Video poker machines operated in state regulated jurisdictions are programmed to deal random card sequences. A series of cards is generated for each play; five are dealt directly to the hand, the other five are dealt in order if requested by the player. This is based on a Nevada regulation, adopted by most other states with a gaming authority, that requires dice and cards used in an electronic game to be as random as the real thing, within computational limits. established by the gaming authority. Video poker machines are tested to ensure compliance with this requirement before they can be offered to the public. Video poker games in Nevada must simulate a deck of 52 cards (or a deck of 53 cards if a joker is used).

It is not clear if all video poker machines in Indian gambling establishments are subject to the same Nevada-style rules, as Indian casinos are located on reservations that are sovereign to the tribe holding the license. of game.

Newer versions of the software no longer deal all 10 cards at once. Now they deal the first five cards, and then when the draw button is pressed, they generate a second set of cards based on the remaining 47 cards in the deck. This was done after players found a way to reverse engineer the loop of a random number generator from sample hands and be able to predict hole cards in advance.
Types of Video Poker Games

Newer video poker machines may employ variations of the basic five card draw. Typical variations include Deuces Wild, where a deuce serves as a wild card and a jackpot is paid for four deuces or a real natural; pay schedule modification, where four aces with five or less pays an improved amount (these games often have some adjective in the title like “bonus,” “double,” or “triple”); and multi-game poker, where the player starts with a base hand of five cards, with each additional hand played being drawn from a different set of cards with the base hand removed. (Multiplayer games are offered in “Triple Play”, “Five Play”, “Ten Play”, “Fifty Play” and even “One Hundred Play” versions.)

In non-wild card games (games that do not have a wild card) a player who plays five or six hundred hands an hour, on average, may be dealt the rare poker about once an hour, whereas a player may play for many days or weeks before receiving an extremely rare royal flush. As with any other game of poker, it is recommended that you take some time to study the hand dealt by the video poker machine before acting. Enjoy!