Video poker sits in a strange middle ground. It looks like a pokie, plays at a pokie’s pace, yet rewards the kind of thinking normally reserved for blackjack or poker tables. For Australian players who want more control over their outcomes, that distinction matters enormously. Unlike a standard poker machine where the reels decide everything, video poker hands you five cards and asks a genuine strategic question: which ones do you keep? Read more about this at https://gamdomaussie.com/bonus/.
Get that decision right and the house edge can drop below 1%. Get it wrong and you may as well be spinning reels blind. This guide covers the mechanics, the maths, and the habits that separate profitable sessions from expensive lessons.
Understanding the Game and Its Paytables
Every video poker variant works from the same foundation. You’re dealt five cards from a standard 52-card deck, you choose which to hold, and the discarded cards are replaced from the remaining 47. Payouts depend on the final hand, from a pair of Jacks or better up to a royal flush.
The paytable is where your money is won or lost, and Australian players need to read it carefully. Two machines running Jacks or Better can look identical but return wildly different percentages. The tell is the royal flush payout relative to the full house and flush prizes.
| Hand | 9/6 Paytable (AUD per 1 credit) | 6/5 Paytable (AUD per 1 credit) |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250 | 250 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 50 |
| Four of a Kind | 25 | 25 |
| Full House | 9 | 6 |
| Flush | 6 | 5 |
The “9/6” label refers to those full house and flush returns. A 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns roughly 99.54% with perfect play, while a 6/5 version drops to about 96.87%. That gap of nearly three percentage points is enormous over a few hundred hands. Always check before you insert a single dollar.
Other variants shift the maths further. Deuces Wild can exceed 100% return on certain paytables, though those are rare in physical venues. Bonus Poker trades a smaller four-of-a-kind payout for bonuses on specific quads, and Double Double Bonus pushes variance higher in exchange for bigger top-end prizes.
Core Strategy: The Decisions That Actually Matter
Correct play follows a hierarchy, and memorising it is the single biggest edge you can build. The golden rule is simple: never break a made paying hand to chase a draw, with one exception , a made flush or straight is sometimes discarded when four cards to a royal flush are present.
Here’s a practical ranking of what to hold, from strongest to weakest:
- Any pat hand that already pays (pair of Jacks or better, two pair, trips, straight, flush, quads)
- Four cards to a royal flush
- Three cards to a royal flush
- Four cards to a straight flush
- Low pair (below Jacks) , this beats most high-card draws
- Two suited high cards
- Three cards to a straight flush
- One high card
Beginners routinely throw away low pairs hoping to pair a single King. That’s a leak. A low pair with three draws gives you roughly a 1 in 5 shot at improving to trips or better, which comfortably outperforms the long odds on a single high card.
Suited cards deserve special attention. Two suited high cards like the Jack and Queen of hearts give you both a pair opportunity and a flush chance, making them far more valuable than two unsuited high cards. Three cards to a royal are worth chasing even when the immediate return looks thin, because the 4,000-credit jackpot on a five-credit bet dwarfs everything else on the machine.
Bankroll Management and Common Mistakes
Strategy only helps if you survive long enough to use it. Video poker is a game of swings, and even a 99.54% machine will produce losing sessions. A reasonable starting bankroll is at least 300 times your bet per hand , so if you’re playing five credits at $1 each, budget around $1,500.
Speed is the quiet killer. Playing 600 hands an hour at $5 per hand means $3,000 cycling through the machine every hour. At a 0.5% house edge, that’s roughly $15 in expected loss per hour, but variance means individual sessions can swing hundreds of dollars either way.
Watch for these frequent errors:
- Holding a kicker with a pair of Aces in games that don’t reward it
- Chasing inside straights instead of holding a low pair
- Playing a poor paytable because the machine “looks lucky”
- Increasing bets after losses rather than sticking to a flat plan
Finally, treat comps and loyalty points as a bonus, not a reason to play. Australian venues often reward consistent play with cashback or meal credits, but chasing them on a weak paytable destroys any theoretical advantage. Find the best-paying machine in the room, learn its optimal strategy inside out, and let the maths do the work.
