Video poker
Video poker is a game that is played on slot machines and is offered in many casinos and gambling halls. It is based on the Five Card Draw variant .
history
The earliest models were introduced at the same time as the first PCs in the mid-1970s . Video poker became popular during the 1980s because the inhibition threshold of playing poker at a machine was lower than that of playing at a table .
The game
The goal in video poker is to reach the top five-card poker hand. The player throws any amount of money into the machine through a slot; with newer devices it is possible to insert a piece of paper with a barcode. After the transaction process has been completed, the player is randomly assigned five cards. He can now determine which and how many of these cards he would like to exchange. After the exchange process has been completed, the machine analyzes the hand. Depending on the combination, the player receives money.
Combinations
| hand | 1 token | 2 chips | 3 chips | 4 chips | 5 chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Quadruplets | 25th | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 9 | 18th | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 6th | 12 | 18th | 24 | 30th |
| Straight | 4th | 8th | 12 | 16 | 20th |
| Triplet | 3 | 6th | 9 | 12 | 15th |
| Two couples | 2 | 4th | 6th | 8th | 10 |
| Two jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 |
| Bank advantage | 1.95% | 1.95% | 1.95% | 1.95% | 0.46% |
The big difference between paying a royal flush between four and five tokens is that it gives players an incentive to play with bigger stakes.
variants
Depending on the machine, there are different variants, some of which are played with or without a joker (wild card). By far the best-known version is Jacks or Better . But variants such as All American , Tens or Better and Deuces Wild can also be found frequently.
State control
The machines in the USA are controlled by the state to ensure that the cards are really dealt out at random.
Typically, the machines simulate the ten cards the player can get in the course of a hand right from the start. After some players managed to use a trick to recognize the sequence of the last five cards before they could even be seen, a generator is built into new devices that only calculates the sequence of the second five cards when they are actually needed .
