hi, and welcome to our series of educational videos that are designed to make you a smarter gambler my name is Steve Bourie and I’m the author of the American casino guide which is the number one bestselling book in the US on the subject of casino gambling and travel and the only book that comes with more than one thousand dollars in casino coupons If you want to know more about me or my book sure to visit my website at americancasinoguide.
com in this video we’ll be hearing from video poker expert Henry Tamburin and we’ll be talking about how to become a winning video poker player Henry has written several books about all aspects of casino gambling plus he writes a monthly column on video poker for several gaming magazines Henry is also an experienced card counter as well as a seasoned blackjack tournament player and has appeared on several TV documentaries about casino gambling in america I’m sure you’ll learn some great tips from Henry about how to become a winning video poker player And now here’s Henry Tamburin A lot of players ask me what’s the difference between playing a video poker machine and playing a slot machine I mean after all you’re playing a machine The quick answer is when you play a slot machine you have no idea what that slot machine is gonna return if you look at that slot machine and you look at the pay schedule it doesn’t give you any information as to what that machine is going to return to players however you can look at any video poker machine and by looking at their pay schedule you have all the information you need to know what this video poker machine staring you in the face is gonna return and most video poker machines I should say most but the better paying one’s have returns have ninety-nine percent or greater and the smart video player poker players will play those machines it’s rare when you get a slot machine that pays ninety-nine percent most of them are 95 percent or less so if you’re a gambler you play slot machines if you want to be a winner you should sick and play with video poker lot of players ask me are all the video poker machines the same and the answer is No generally they’re all different types a video poker machines and video poker games that you’ll find in the casino Generally you can group them into three major groups the first group of video poker games are the ones that don’t have a wild card there are no wild cards for example Jacks or Better bonus poker double bonus double double bonus all these games based on jacks or better don’t have any wild cards Then you have the games like deuces wild where all the twos or the deuces are wild and then you have another group of games where the jokers are wild so there are different types of video poker games and the casino in you certainly should know the differences amongst the three So now the question is what is the best video poker game to play and the answer is you wanna play a video poker game which is called a full pay video poker game by full pay i mean a video poker game that has the highest payoff schedule for that particular game for example there are many Jacks or Better video poker games in the casino the ones that pay the highest are known as 9/6 Jacks or Better games The 9/6 refers to the upper coin payoff for the full house and the flush so you want to look at the 9/6 jacks or better game look at the pay of schedule on the screen go down the first column which shows the payoff for one coin and you want to make sure that that machine pays nine coins for the full house and six for the flush that’s a full pay machine and those are the ones you wanna play rather than the jacks or better machines that pay 8/5 or even 7/5 Now that I explained about a full pay machine the obvious question you’ll want to ask someone is where can I find these full pay machines are they available in every casino the US? And the answer is yes and no.
Some gaming jurisdictions like Las Vegas you’ll find many casinos that offer the full pay games if you go to a place like Atlantic City there are only one or two casinos that offer full pay video poker games.
One way to find out whether a local casino that’s close to where you live has any full pay video poker games is to go to this website VPfree2.com so that’s VPfree2.com and that site has lists of casinos and different gaming jurisdictions in each of those casinos they will list whether or not the casino has any full pay video poker games but you have to be careful because some casinos will have full pay video poker games sitting right next to lower-paying video poker games so you’ve got to be able to look at those pay schedules and make sure you’re playing only a full pay video poker game when you play video poker once you learn how to read the pay schedules and be selective and play only full pay video poker games the next thing you have to master is the playing strategy for whatever game you wanna play for example if you’re gonna play jacks or better there is a specific playing strategy for that game and it’s important that you master it For example suppose you’re dealt a four card flush and the hand also contains a low pair so as a video poker player you have to make a decision do i hold a 4 card flush or do I hold the low pair There is a correct basic playing strategy for that hand and the answer is you should hold the four card flush So if you’re gonna play video poker it’s important that you learn the basic playing strategy for whatever game you wanna play now can you use the same basic strategy for video poker are all different video poker games? In general the answer is No you can’t and you shouldn’t use a basic strategy for jacks or better if your gonna play a deuces wild game that’s a big mistake So there is a specific basic playing strategy for deuces wild which is different than a basic strategy for jacks or better which is different than say a basic strategy for jokers wild there are some exceptions if you learn the basic playing strategy for jacks or better you can use it for example to play bonus poker and you’re not going to decrease your return on those games because you’re using a jacks or better playing strategy but that’s the exception rather than the rule as a general rule you should learn the correct basic strategy for whatever video poker game you want to play Now i talked about the importance of learning the video poker basic strategy and the question is how can I learn this strategy? Fortunately nowadays we have tools that will help you learn this video poker basic strategy really easily and that’s this video poker training software you can buy one of these CDs and you pop it in your computer and while you’re playing video poker at home these CD’s and software will help you learn the strategy because what they’ll do is they’ll alert you when you make a playing mistake and they’ll tell you what the correct play is and more importantly they’ll keep track of your playing accuracy and you want to be able to get your accuracy at 99 percent playing at home before you risk any money in the casino So there is plenty of video poker software available that can help players learn the basic strategy The other thing you should do is bring along strategy cards there are several commercially available video poker strategy cards so we’re playing in the casino you can refer to the card and you’ll always have the strategy at your fingertips when you play most of the time when you play video poker you’re going to have an a return of somewhere between 99 and 100 percent so the question is how can I get my overall return over a hundred percent if I’m playing a machine that say only pays 99.
5 percent The answer is as a smart video poker player you must take advantage of the benefits that are available through the Players Club so if you’re gonna play video poker you wanna make sure you get the players club card and you always use it when you play video poker some other benefits that are available to video poker players are cashback, freeplay comps in the form of free meals free show tickets free rooms even free spa treatments Now this’ll vary from one casino to another but it’s important that you make sure you know what benefits are are available to you at a casino that you’re going to play video poker Now if you wanna be a long-term winner at video poker there’s three components that you have to monitor and be aware of One is obviously the return on the game and there it’s a simple matter of only playing the full pay scheduled games the ones that return ninety nine percent or greater the second is what percent cash back am I gonna get when I play video poker and a lot of casinos they give .
