Introduction to Video Poker

Video Poker originally came about in the mid 1970s, as that was the first time in history that it was commercially viable to pair a monitor with a central processing unit. The first Video Poker games were extremely basic, and hardly resemble the flashy games seen in the casinos of today. The first video poker game that was released was "Draw Poker" in 1979, which was produced by International Game Technology. "Draw Poker" was the big game throughout the early 1980's, and players started becoming very fond of Video Poker machines because they were simple and much less intimidating than the more complicated table games like Craps or Blackjack. Present day Video Poker games come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The most common game, Jacks or Better, has been around for over 20 years and continues to remain a player favorite. Jacks or Better is played just like the original "Draw Poker" game. The player receives five face up cards, and chooses which of those five cards he/she would like to hold, and which he/she would like to discard for new cards. After you've selected which cards to hold, click "Draw" to receive your new cards. If your final hand is a pair of Jacks or better you receive a payout that varies in size depending on the hand and the pay table used at the specific Jacks or Better machine. That brings us to our next point in this article: pay tables actually vary from machine to machine, even if both machines are running the same game. Jacks or Better, for example, is offered with over five different pay tables ranging from full pay (the best for the player) to low pay (the best for the casino). If you're going to play video poker, you should research the respective pay tables for the machine you're playing to make sure it is offering the best odds possible. Full pay Jacks or Better pays out a maximum of 99.54%, while some of the low pay versions pay back as little as 95%.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------