Video Poker — Jacks or Better

Five cards, one draw, no dealer — the whole game is one hold decision, and all 32 of them are priced exactly, every hand. The full-pay 9/6 machine returns 99.54% to perfect play.

Jacks or Better

• 32holds priced exactly
• 99.54%full-pay return

Manual

One deal, one draw.

Five cards, hold any of them — all five, none — and the machine replaces the rest exactly once. The hand you end on is the hand.

No dealer.

Nothing to beat and nobody to bluff: the final hand is paid straight off the ladder, as a multiple of the stake.

Jacks are the floor.

A pair pays only at jacks or better. Tens or lower is a pair the machine does not see.

The royal is quoted at 800.

That is the five-coin rate — the rate the machine’s jackpot actually pays — and the rate every serious paytable is read at.

The deck is fixed at the deal.

Replacements come off the same shuffled deck, in order. The machine decided your draw before you did.

The machine

A stake, five cards, one decision: hold any of the five — all of them, none of them — and the machine replaces the rest in a single draw. The hand you end on is paid off the ladder on the glass, as a multiple of the stake.

There is no dealer and nothing to beat. The floor is a pair of jacks: jacks or better pays even money, tens or lower pays nothing, and anything under one pair loses the stake.

The paytable

The full-pay 9/6 machine, named for its full house and flush rows. The royal is quoted at 800 by convention: a real machine pays its 4,000-coin royal jackpot only at five coins staked — 800 per coin — so every serious paytable is read at that rate.

The numbers

Played perfectly, the 9/6 machine returns 99.54% of everything staked — one of the thinnest edges in the building. The 8/5 machine returns 97.27%.

The whole difference is two rows of the ladder: the full house at 9 against 8 and the flush at 6 against 5. Machines that look identical differ by exactly such rows, so always read the paytable before sitting down.

Strategy highlights

Keep a low pair over a single high card: the pair returns 0.82 per unit, the lone king 0.48.

Keep four to a flush over a low pair: 1.15 against 0.82.

Never break a made hand for anything less than a royal draw: a pat flush banks 6.00 per unit while the straight-flush draw hiding inside it is worth 3.40.

Those rules cover the common cases; the ledger does not need them. All 32 holds are priced exactly on every hand — when a rule and the row disagree, the row is right.

Enter