Prior to this chapter you have learned everything you need to know about video poker in order to begin live casino play. You now know how the various different video poker games work. You learned about bankroll sizes. You learned about strategy charts; how they are developed and how they are used for live casino play. You now have all the tools you need to become a successful player of live casino video poker – or even online video poker for that matter.

In this chapter you will learn several tips for making the most of your actual live casino video poker play. From finding the best video poker game to play, to tips on live video poker playing etiquette, to how fast to play your chosen video poker game, it is all in this chapter.

Are you ready to have at it?

Alright, let us begin.

Even if the playing rules are fairly straightforward as is the case with live casino blackjack, video poker (whether live casino video poker or the online video poker) pits the player against the machine. The player is not a part of a pool of other players. It is therefore less intimidating than blackjack. It is well-known that casino blackjack players cannot resist giving advice to and complaining about other players who may not play exactly as they would.

A primary (if not the primary) criterion in determining the best video poker game to play is the return of the game. The reason is simple. The lower the return, the faster your bankroll disappears. And the faster your bankroll disappears, the less opportunity you have of hitting a royal flush or other jackpot-sized hand. Several years back it was fairly easy to find games that returned close to or above 100 percent. Those glory days are now long gone but you can still find some games that return 99 percent up to more than 100 percent. They may be a bit hard to find but these are the games that you should seek out. If you cannot find any games with that high a return anywhere in the casino, you should either play the game with the highest return you can find or simply don’t play. I personally will not play any game that returns less than 99 percent. I have worked very hard to acquire and build my gambling bankroll (401G) and I refuse to waste it on a video poker game that returns too little.

If you have an adequate bankroll and, more importantly, you can handle the emotional roller coaster of a high variance game, you could consider games such as Double Bonus Poker (this is an excellent game from a return standpoint if you can find a full pay 10 / 7 / 5 game), Double-Double Bonus Poker, Triple Bonus Poker or any of the other games that have more than one very high paying hand.

However, if you get to the point where you feel like you want to throw something (or someone) through a window when you are experiencing a long losing streak, it is much better for you to select a low variance game. Some good low variance video poker games are Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, Deuces Wild, and Pick ‘Em / Pick A Pair Poker. These are among the lowest variance of all video poker games available in a live or online casino today.

The last of the major criteria is the complexity of the video poker game’s playing strategy. In order to get the highest return from any video poker game you must use the proper playing strategy and you must follow that strategy perfectly. Some strategies are fairly simple, others more complex, and still others ridiculously complex.

If you are good at memorizing a long list of rules and you are able to act on them when needed, you might be able to handle any game no matter how complex the strategy. If, however, you have diculty with this, you should select a game with a simpler playing strategy. Having a strategy chart to reference while playing in the casino will greatly reduce the amount of studying and practice that is required to play well, but you should have most of the strategy committed to memory in order to play the video poker game more naturally.

Some of the simpler video poker playing strategies are for the games of Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, some Deuces Wild games, and Pick’Em / Pick A Pair Poker. Later chapters in this Ultimate Guide to Video Poker have the playing strategies included so you will be able to see for yourself just how complex the strategies are for the game or games you may want to attempt to play.

Of course, using the proper playing strategy is not an absolute requirement. It is your money to play as you wish. Using the proper strategy, however, does allow you to stay in the game as long as possible, thereby giving the best chance of hitting a jackpot. If you are taking the time to go through this video poker guide in order to learn to be the best, why would you even consider playing anything but perfect video poker strategy? The bottom line is, the simpler the strategy, the more perfectly you will play it.

“What etiquette?” you may ask. “Did you not say that one of the advantages of playing casino video poker was you did not have to interact with other players like you do when you are playing table games? If that is true, why on earth would I have to worry about my playing etiquette while playing live casino video poker?”

I will admit that if you are playing online video poker from the comfort of your own home and there is no one else around when you play, then there is absolutely no need for any etiquette while you are playing online video poker.

However, a vast majority of video poker play is done in a real live casino. You know, the kind made of brick and mortar or other solid and sturdy materials. In a real, physical casino that offers live casino games to play, there are also real, live people there to play those casino games.

When you play live casino video poker you may not have to directly and intimately interact with other players, but that does not mean that you can be totally oblivious of the other players around you in that casino.

It is true that for the most part you do not have to interact directly with other casino patrons when you play live video poker. Table games are inherently social games. In live casino blackjack each player in turn must decide whether to hit, stand, double down or split their hand. This is done while all the other players at the table have nothing to do but watch your playing decisions.

In craps, only one person has the dice. All eyes are on this person as the craps game proceeds. The same is true for baccarat, pai gow poker, three card poker, and Caribbean stud. In fact, all live casino table games are social in nature so the entire table watches everyone else who plays at their table.

While playing live casino video poker, however, it is just you and your machine. You do not have to wait for any other players in order to make your bet and play a hand. All of this is good for you. You do not, out of the necessity of the rules of the game, have to wait for others or depend on others to win or lose a bet.

But, even though other players are not part and parcel of the normal flow of the game of video poker, there will be other players around you when you are playing the game. They may be immediately to your left or right. They may be a few stools away from you. But, there are people near you who will be affected by how you act when you play live video poker.

With that in mind, here are seven tips for proper live casino video poker playing etiquette which you need to keep in mind and follow if you want to have a good overall video poker playing experience.

As you can see, the above seven tips are really nothing more than common courtesy. Video poker players in a live casino situation play very close to each other. Each player’s actions not only affect him or her but also all of those around them. Playing live casino video poker or any live casino game for that matter can get frustrating – especially when you are losing. You can find more video poker tips on 888casino as well.

Doing everything you can to minimize your impact on others around you will be much appreciated. When it comes to live casino play, just as is true throughout life, the golden rule of treating others as you would like to be treated is by far the best way for you to go.

If you are a new live casino video poker player who is just learning the strategy of how to play your current video poker game, your speed of play will no doubt be quite slow. You will want to make very sure that each and every hold you make is absolutely correct.

In fact, if you are at all like most newbie video poker players your actual live casino play will go something like this.

Clearly this process will not be a fast one. In fact, you may be lucky to play more than two or three hands per minute while you are learning how to play the proper strategy. That is just fine. You want to make very sure that everything you are doing is exactly correct. If that means it takes 30 seconds to play one hand, well then, it takes 30 seconds to play each hand.

Over time you will find that you will become more sure of your holds. Repeated practice will gradually speed up your play. As you become more confident, you will refer to your strategy chart less often. As you refer to your strategy chart less often, the time to complete each hand will diminish. Your play will become faster and faster until you find that you never need to refer to your strategy chart.

Some set the speed of the machine on the slowest possible setting. They then hit the “Max Credits” button. Next they study the cards that are dealt in great detail. Then, slowly and deliberately, they will use one finger to select each card to be held and then hit the “Deal / Draw” button slowly and deliberately with the same finger. They then study the final hand as if they believe that by staring at it the results of the hand will change. If the hand is a winner, they watch each credit register on the meter. They will then pause a while to make sure the final tally is correct. The process then starts all over. Their playing mantra could be best summed up by William Shakespeare who wrote “Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run too fast.”

He knows that the machine will automatically give him the proper number of credits so unless he has a hand that requires a hand pay or one that might require an attendant to check the hand in order to get a bonus of some type, he immediately starts hitting the “Max Credits” button repeatedly to instantly record any credits won on the meter without taking the time to watch them add up. The continued tapping of the “Max Credits” button has the added benefit of immediately dealing the next hand. As you can easily see, the sole goal of this type of player is to get as many hands played in as short a time as possible.

If you have spent any amount of time at a live casino video poker bar, I am sure you have seen both of these types of players as well as everything in between. If you are serious about playing video poker, what is the best speed for you to play the game? Should you play “slow and sure”? Or should you play like a race car driver?

Let us take a look at what all is in play.

First and foremost, if you are playing a machine where the house has the edge (when you count the return of the video poker game as well as any slot club bonus points, free play, and / or comps you receive), you are much better o pacing your play. The reason for this is the more you play, the more you will lose. Sure you may hit some big winners, but the more you play the closer to the mathematical house edge you will be and the more the house will take of your hard earned money. So if you don’t have an edge (including slot club points, free play, and possibly comps), take your time playing. Don’t rush to give the house any more of your bankroll than you must.

This is a truly scorching pace to maintain. It can be done, however, for two or more hours if you are rested and alert going into the session. The actual mechanics of play sometimes cause errors. One of the buttons may stick causing a mistake in the hold, but this is very rare. If you find you have a machine with a sticky key, you should either dramatically slow your play to make sure all of your holds are registered or move to another fully functional video poker game.

What does suer over time when play is very fast is the accuracy of analyzing the hands dealt and determining the best cards to hold. This tends to deteriorate over time. You may miss a low pair while instead saving one high card. Or, you may save one pair but fail to notice you have an additional pair. You may find yourself noticing something in the dealt hand after you held the cards and hit the “Deal / Draw” button. What you noticed is something that would have changed your hold. When this happens it is time to slow down. Take a little extra time to make sure you are making the best play possible on each hand. The house makes enough money. Don’t give them more by being reckless. If you find yourself still making mistakes even after slowing down, then it is time to take a break. Get up and leave the area. Take a walk around the casino or even outside. You could even take a nap if that sort of thing works for you. Take time to completely refresh yourself before attacking the video poker machines once again.

When playing with an edge, Wyatt Earp probably said it best when he quipped, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.” So make sure you don’t get killed. Make doubly sure you are playing correctly. That is what is really important.

Video poker or any live casino or online game for that matter can be a lot of fun to play. It can also be extremely frustrating at times. Most video poker players who make a trip to a casino in order to play live casino video poker have a certain amount of play in mind when they arrive. It may be only an hour or so each day, but more likely it is several hours per day.

Some live casino video poker players will have taken some of the sage advice offered in this guide as well as other venues and make sure they have brought with them an adequate bankroll to stake their video poker play for the entire stay at the casino. Certainly you, the reader of this Ultimate Guide to Video Poker, will be among that group, correct?

Well, I certainly hope that you are not that type of gambler. Nothing guarantees that any bad streak will turn around at any given time. That is why you were given the rules for bankroll management. When you exhaust your video poker bankroll, whether it is your session bankroll or your trip bankroll, you must stop playing. If you do not, you are playing with fire. If you do not have the discipline to stop playing when your bankroll runs out, you very well may not have the discipline to stop until you are completely out of money – including your house payment, grocery money and even the money for your heart surgery.

The first rule for when to stop playing video poker is to stop when your session bankroll is gone. Do not raid your trip bankroll. Do not raid your bank account from an ATM. Just stop – period!

Okay, we have that one totally clarified. Are there other times you should stop playing live casino video poker?

If you are making mistakes, it is time to stop playing. So stop. You are only hurting yourself if you continue your video poker play.

Now how about another example of when to stop playing video poker? You are playing along and doing okay. Maybe you are a little bit down, but you are holding your own. As you are trying to focus on your video poker play to make sure you are making all the right hold decisions, someone sits down at the machine right next to you. They say “hi” and you respond with a polite but somewhat curt “hello.” But they do not take the cue and try to carry on a conversation. You are as polite as possible, but you really do not want to talk. They continue trying to strike up a conversation by asking you questions about the game or why you made the hold you just made. You are getting a little but edgy and it is starting to affect your play. You miss an easy hold. Then they light up a cigarette. As they puff away the smoke streams right at you. You are frustrated. You are irritated. Let’s face it, you are angry.

Here is another situation to consider. You have been playing video poker for a while. Things went alright for the first half hour or so, but it has been quite a while since you had anything more than a three of a kind. Your credits are slowly disappearing as you get low pair after low pair and never convert a single one into a paying hand. The person playing next to you has been hitting winner after winner as heralded by the loud staccato sounds emanating from his machine. You are not really frustrated, but you also are not having any fun. You may also be getting a bit tired from playing so long.

Whenever you are not having fun playing your favorite game it is definitely time to stop. Eventually this will turn into frustration and you will start making errors. If you are no longer enjoying your time playing video poker, then stop. Take a break. Take as long as you need until you are ready to once again enjoy the game you made the trip to the casino in order to play.

There is one last situation that highlights when to stop playing video poker. You have been playing for quite a while. You have done fairly well. You have won a few hundred additional credits and you are starting to get bored, or edgy. You are really looking for a reason to stop playing. Once to get to this point, you could simply stop, but I like to have a little fun with it. I like to set a couple of stop playing limits – a high limit and a low limit. For example, if I have been hovering in the 400 to 500 credits range, I will set an upper stop limit of 600 credits and a lower stop limit of 400 credits. Notice that I set the upper limit a bit higher in an effort to take a bit more from the game. As soon as I hit either limit, that is it. I am done for that session. By setting the limits when you start getting bored, you are giving yourself something to focus on in order to keep your interest. You are setting the stage to leave before too much more time has passed and you start making some mistakes. You also set the low limit fairly high in order to keep as much as possible of what you have won so far. It is always nice to end a session on an up note. By setting stop limits as described here, you will accomplish that goal.

So far you have learned several situations where you should stop playing video poker. What about a situation where you should not quit playing your favorite live casino game?

Several gambling pundits pontificate that you should always quit while you are ahead. That is all well and good, but just what does this advice really mean to you and your video poker play? Let us imagine you sit down at your favorite live casino video poker game. You slip a $20 bill into the currency reader. You hit the “Max Bet” button for a $1.25 bet and are dealt a pair of 5’s. You hold the low pair and hit the “Deal / Draw” button. You draw another 5, end up with three of a kind and are paid $3.75. You are ahead by $2.50. If you are to take the gambling pundits advice, it is time to quit playing. You are ahead, so stop, they tell you.

As you have learned in the first chapter, one of the main reasons for the popularity of video poker is it usually has a considerably higher payback than slot machines. In fact some games return more than 100 percent for a skilled player. Regardless of which video poker game you play, achieving the long term return percentage is dependent on getting your fair share of royal flushes. By a royal flush I mean the royal flush that really counts – the natural royal flush that is formed without the aid of a wild card. These generally pay 4,000 credits for a five-credit bet or 800 for 1.

So just how rare are these game altering royal flushes? How frequently can you expect to be blessed by their presence? Here is a look at the math.

In an earlier chapter you learned that there are about 2.5 million possible five card hands that can be made from a 52 card deck. Let us take a look at how that number is determined. In a game that uses a 52 card deck (meaning there are no wild cards) each initial hand dealt consists of:

Okay, so what does all this mean to you as a live casino video poker player?

Assuming an even distribution of all the possible hands you should receive a royal flush every 40,000 to 48,000 hands or so. In the rare situation that you are playing Pick’Em / Pick A Pair poker it will be about 352,000 hands. Some advanced players can play over 1,000 hands per hour with great accuracy. The average recreational player probably plays closer to 400 to 500 hands per hour. So an average recreational player will take somewhere between 80 to 120 hours to reach 40,000 to 48,000 hands played. Looking at it from a slightly dierent perspective, you will have two to three standard 40 hour work weeks of play between royal flushes. You can do the math on your own play to see how many playing sessions it will take to play 40,000 to 48,000 hands, but no matter how you look at it you are in for a lot of video poker playing sessions.

There is another fact you must also consider. Royal flushes (or straight flushes, or four of a kinds, etc.) do not appear in an even distribution. You could get two royal flushes back to back, or it might take three, four, five, or more times the average before you see a royal flush.

The only thing that remains constant is that you have about a one in 40,000 plus chance of getting a royal flush on each and every hand you play.

What does this mean to you concerning royal flushes?

Be patient. It may be a very long time before you see a royal flush.

Play perfect strategy. That will help you extend your time playing at the video poker machines and give you added opportunities to get a royal flush.

Be ready for losses averaging at least an additional two percent in between royal flush hits.

Plan your sessions. Have a large enough bankroll to tide you over the losing cycles.

By doing the above, you will have many rewarding hours, days, weeks and months playing live casino video poker.

The first slot clubs were introduced in order to generate loyalty to the casino by their patrons. Over time the popularity of slot clubs grew exponentially. Now virtually every casino in the United States has some form of slot club. Casino conglomerates oer slot club benefits that can be earned and used at any or all of their brand’s casinos.

It is no longer a differentiator for a casino to just have a slot club for players to join and earn points. In order to stand out from the other competing casinos, many have chosen to run special promotions for their slot club members.

Virtually all slot clubs allow the live casino player to earn bonus points which are good for free play on any of the casino’s non-table games. Sometimes the bonus points are even good for cash. The amount of play required to earn a point varies from casino to casino. The norm for downtown Las Vegas as well as most locals joints is one point for every dollar played in reel or video slots and about half that for play on video poker machines (although even these guidelines tend to fluctuate a good deal). On the Las Vegas Strip it might take $5, $10 or even more video poker play for one point. In most cases 1,000 points is worth one dollar in free play (although, again, this figure can vary a good deal). Depending on the formula for earning points and how much the points are worth, this feature can add roughly .05 to .1 percent to the return from the casino’s video poker games.

Keep in mind that free play differs from cash. Free play must be used for play on games in the casino. If you have $10 worth of free play, you must play that amount of through a machine. Once you have played $10 through a machine, you are free to cash out anything won during play. With cash, you can simply “take the money and run” should you so choose. Cash is worth more than free play because it is 100 percent return, and there is no variance. Free play is subject to the return and variance of the games that are played with it.

One popular promotion for slot clubs is to offer multiple bonus points on certain days. Some casinos may even offer multiple tier points occasionally. These are usually slower days or times so the promotion gets additional activity in the casino. These promotions offer 2X, 3X, 5X or sometimes even 10X the normal base rate for earning points. It can mean as much as .5 to one percent additional return. These promotions can be very profitable if you going to be there on the day(s) and time(s) of the promotion. If it takes a special trip and especially if you need to travel some distance to take advantage of the promotion, it loses much of its value due to the extra travel expenses. Also, many times the multiplied points earned are limited to a few thousand points. This can dramatically reduce the value of the promotion.

Just how valuable are slot club benefits? It is somewhat cliché, but the answer really is “it depends.” If the casino is close, if you really enjoy the atmosphere and other intangibles, and most importantly if the casino’s video poker returns are excellent; these benefits will add to your long term profits which can be very worthwhile. Even if the video poker returns are just decent, adding good slot club benefits can turn negative expectation play into positive expectation (advantage) play.

If you have several places that are close and you enjoy playing at them, looking at the slot club benefits could help make the decision as to where to concentrate your play.

Occasionally there are some very special promotions offered by casinos.