Game play begins by placing a bet of one or more
credits, by inserting money (or in newer
machines, a barcoded paper ticket with credit)
into the machine, and then pressing a "Deal"
button to draw cards. The player is then given
an opportunity to keep or discard one or more of
the cards in exchange for a new card drawn from
the same virtual deck. After the draw, the
machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout
if the hand matches one of the winning hands in
the posted pay schedule.
On a typical video poker machine, payouts start
with a minimum hand of a pair of jacks. Pay
tables allocate the payout for hands based
partially upon how rare they are, and also based
upon the total theoretical return the game
operator chooses to offer.
Some machines offer progressive jackpots for the
royal flush, (and sometimes for other rare hands
as well), thereby spurring players to both play
more coins and to play more frequently.
Newer video poker machines
may employ variants of the basic five-card draw.
Typical variations include Deuces Wild, where a
two serves as a wild card and a jackpot is paid
for four deuces or a natural royal; pay schedule
modification, where four aces with a five or
smaller kicker pays an enhanced amount (these
games usually have some adjective in the title
such as "bonus", "double", or "triple"); and
multi-play poker, where the player starts with a
base hand of five cards, and each additional
played hand draws from a different set of cards
with the base hand removed. (Multi-play games
are offered in "Triple Play", "Five Play", "Ten
Play", "Fifty Play" and even "One Hundred Play"
versions.)
In the non-wild games (games which do not have a
wild card) a player who plays five or six
hundred hands per hour, on average, may receive
the rare four-of-a-kind approximately once per
hour, while a player may play for many days or
weeks before receiving an extremely rare royal
flush.
A poker machine with auto-read will help you
with the
poker odds in
real-time while playing online poker.