How to Calculate Video Poker RTP and Maximize Payout Potential

Video poker is one of the unique casino games where your decisions influence the outcome of a hand. Unlike slots or roulette, where you are simply staking money and pressing the Spin button, video poker allows you to maximize your winning potential by making informed decisions. This opens up many strategies for players looking to reduce the house edge to a minimum and push to make a profit.

The house edge can vary drastically depending on which video poker game you play, and how the paytable is structured. If you find a “Full Pay” game, the house’s edge can be as low as 0.5% or even less. All you need is a few minutes to understand how to optimize your decision-making, to play a few rounds to memorize the patterns, and you can begin your adventures.

Understanding how Video Poker Works

Video poker is based on five card draw poker. The principles of the game are the same for almost all the different variants you will find. Stake your bet, and then you are dealt 5 cards. You have to decide which of the cards you will hold and which you will discard. After you have confirmed which cards you want to discard, these will be replaced with new cards. The round ends, and if you have a winning hand, you are paid out your winnings.

The hands used are the same as in poker, starting from Pairs and going through Straights, Flushes, and finally the Royal Flush. If you are not familiar with them, it is highly worth quickly brushing up on your poker hands, but don’t worry, they are very simple and easy to learn. Even if you haven’t played poker before, you may be familiar with the following. They are listed from the weakest hand to the strongest.

• Two Pair
• Three of a Kind
• Straight
• Flush
• Full House
• Four of a Kind (Quad)
• Straight Flush
• Royal Flush

These are all the basic poker hands, and virtually all video poker games will feature them. There are some that have different paytables for specific hands, such as lower-ranking or higher-ranking Four of a Kinds. Or they may diversify the payouts on Two Pair – for example giving you more if you land a specific pair.

Full Pay Versus Short Pay Video Poker

That is not the only area in which the payouts may differ from game to game. Not all video poker titles have the same paytable structure, even if you are looking at two games of the same variant. Take Jacks or Better, arguably the most popular video poker game. There are 5+ different paytables that you can find out there, with the RTP ranging from 99.54% down to 95%. This significant difference comes from the slight difference in the odds for specific payouts.

You may have heard of Full Pay and Short Pay video poker games. These have nothing to do with the variant or the rules. Instead, they refer to which paytable the game uses. We have covered these extensively in our Video Poker Paytables Guide. There, you will see exactly which paytables pay best for all the different video poker games.

But just for a taster, we will explain how the paytables can affect the Jacks or Better video poker game. For the most part, the paytables are the same, with Royal Flush paying out 800x and Jacks or Better paying out 1x. However, there are differences in the payouts on Full House hands and Flushes. The Jacks or Better 6/9 has the highest RTP, as it pays out 9x on a Full House and 6x on a Flush.

Jacks or Better 9/5 pays out 9x on the Full House and just 5x on the Flush. These numbers get worse as we go through the Jacks or Better 8/6, 8/5, 7/5, and finally 6/5. That last one has an RTP of 95%, a house edge of 5% compared to the 9/6 house edge of just 0.54%.

Poker Hands Probabilities and Odds

Like any other casino game, everything in video poker breaks down to probability and the prices on the odds. The actual probability of you forming a winning hand is lower than what the payout’s implied probability is. This ensures the house will make a profit in the long run, but doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose money if you play. Let’s analyze the real-life probabilities of winning hands in video poker.

• Nothing – 54.54%
• Jacks or Better – 21.46%
• Two Pair – 12.93%
• Three Of A Kind – 7.45%
• Straight – 1.12%
• Flush – 1.1%
• Full House – 1.15%
• Four Of A Kind – 0.236%
• Straight Flush – 0.011%
• Royal Flush – 0.002%

The probability of making a Royal Flush in one go (that is, drawing a Royal Flush in your first 5 cards), is 0.000153%. That is, it will happen once in every 650,000 hands, hypothetically speaking of course. The chances of making a winning hand are around 45.46%, and the majority of the time you are either drawing Jacks or Better or Two Pair.

How House Edges Comes Into Play

This takes us onto the house edge. The odds themselves will show us the implied probability of each hand getting drawn. Taking the discrepancy between the implied and the real probabilities, we get the house edge on each bet.

For this example, we will look at two Jacks or Better Paytables. One is the Full Pay 9/6 game and the other is a 6/5 Short Pay game.

• Jacks or Better – 1:1 Odds – 50% IP
• Two Pair – 2:1 Odds – 33.3% IP
• Three Of A Kind – 3:1 Odds – 25% IP
• Straight – 4:1 Odds – 20% IP
• Flush – 6:1 Odds – 14.3% IP / 5:1 Odds -16.7% IP
• Full House – 9:1 Odds – 10% IP / 6:1 Odds – 14.3% IP
• Four Of A Kind – 25:1 Odds – 3.8% IP
• Straight Flush – 50:1 Odds – 2% IP
• Royal Flush – 800:1 Odds – 0.125%

There are already big discrepancies in the implied probabilities for each hand. To calculate the RTP for each hand, we need to multiply the payouts by the actual probabilities of the hands occurring. Instead of percentages, we need to convert the actual probability back to the original decimal value (Royal Flush is not 0.002% but 0.000025), and multiply by the payout given. We got the following:

• Jacks or Better – 21.46% RTP
• Two Pair – 25.86% RTP
• Three Of A Kind – 22.32% RTP
• Straight – 4.48% RTP
• Flush – 9.9% RTP / 6.6% RTP
• Full House – 6.9% RTP / 5.75%
• Four Of A Kind – 6% RTP
• Straight Flush – 0.55% RTP
• Royal Flush – 2% RTP

Maximizing Your Earnings

There are loads of video poker basic strategy charts, that will tell you exactly what to do with any given hand. These differ from game to game, and you must make sure you have the right one for the variant you are playing. The principle of these charts is that they calculate the best possible ways to use your dealt hands to ensure you make a profit.

In some cases, the strategy may tell you to discard an already winning hand in exchange for the opportunity to make a much higher paying one. Such as aiming for a Four of a Kind, Straight Flush or Royal Flush. It may be tempting to settle for the lower paying hand, but by doing so you inadvertently reduce your chances of making a profit. The goal is to cut out any anomalies and look to make big wins instead of sticking to small ones.

Odds of Improving Your Dealt Hands

After all, the payout for the lowest hands is good, but they will not sustain longer periods of gaming. Luck is an integral part of these games, whether you use a strategy or not. But by using a strategy, you can reduce the house edge ever so slightly. Using a strategy requires big decision making, and sometimes sacrificing smaller wins for the chance at shooting for something much greater. The odds on improving your hand may not be so far fetched – but remember – there are no guarantees.

• Turning 1 Pair into 2 Pairs – 16.67%
• Turning 1 Pair into Three of a Kind – 11.11%
• Turning 2 Pair into a Full House – 8.33%
• Turning 1 Pair Into Four of a Kind – 2.78%
• Turning Three of a Kind into a Full House – 6.25%
• Turning Three of a Kind into Four of a Kind – 4.17%
• Drawing 1 Card to Make a Flush – 20%
• Drawing 2 Cards to Make a Flush – 4.17%
• Drawing 1 Card to an Open Ended Straight – 16.67%
• Drawing 2 Cards to an Open Ended Straight – 4.34%
• Drawing 1 Card to an Inside Straight – 8.33%
• Drawing 1 Card to an Open Ended Straight Flush – 4.17%
• Drawing 1 Card to a Royal Flush – 2.13%

To achieve the occasional big wins, you will need to have a solid bankroll to sustain longer periods of gaming.

Using Expert Strategies to Master Video Poker

There are all sorts of betting systems that revolve around how much you stake each round. You can use these to mitigate your losses and keep going for longer, or to push aggressively for bigger wins – at the expense of facing heavy losses if things don’t pan out your way. In video poker, patience is an essential part of turning the game to work in your favor.

If you find a good video poker strategy chart, make sure you either memorize it or keep it with you during your gaming. That way, you will always make the mathematically sound decision that will work in your favor in the long run. Choose a starting stake that suits your budget, and that you can stick to for many rounds to come. And stick to the plan at all costs, otherwise you risk losing all the progress you made during your gaming.