Games
Video Poker RTP and Pay Tables
Video poker is the only casino game where you can read the exact return off the machine before you play. The pay table on the screen determines it completely: a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54% with optimal play, while the 8/5 version of the same game returns 97.30%. The two machines look identical.
Written by the Moes Almanac editorial team
99.54%
Equivalent to a house edge of 0.46% — marginally better than a good blackjack table, and the best return widely available in a casino.
The only game in the building that tells you its price before you pay it.
How the game works
You are dealt five cards, choose which to keep, and the rest are replaced once. The resulting hand is paid according to a fixed pay table. There is no dealer, no opponent, and no bluffing — video poker borrows poker's hand rankings and nothing else from the game it is named after.
Because the deck is a standard 52 cards and the pay table is published on the machine, every decision has a computable expected value. Like blackjack it is a solved game; unlike blackjack, the solution changes with every pay table.
The pay table is the whole game
"9/6" refers to what a full house and a flush pay per coin wagered. Dropping those two lines from 9 and 6 to 8 and 5 removes more than two percentage points of return, and nothing else about the machine changes — not the artwork, not the name on the screen, not the deal.
| Game and pay table | RTP |
|---|---|
| Deuces Wild, full pay Above break-even, now nearly extinct, and unforgiving of a single wrong hold | 100.76% |
| Jacks or Better 9/6 | 99.54% |
| Jacks or Better 8/5 | 97.30% |
| Jacks or Better 6/5 Approximate | 95.00% |
Always bet maximum coins
A royal flush pays 250 per coin on bets of one to four coins, but 800 per coin on a five-coin bet. Playing short costs roughly a point and a half of return — more than the gap between a good and a mediocre pay table. If five coins is more than you want to risk, drop to a lower denomination rather than betting fewer coins.
Strategy is a ranked list of holds
Optimal play means holding, for each deal, the combination with the highest expected value. In practice that collapses into a ranked list you read down until something matches your hand.
- Four cards to a royal flush beats every made hand except a straight flush — break a flush or a straight to draw at it.
- A made pair of jacks or better beats four cards to a straight.
- Never keep a kicker alongside a pair. It cannot improve the hand and it lowers your return.
Royal flushes arrive roughly once every 40,000 hands, and a meaningful share of the machine's advertised return lives in that single line. This is why a short session almost never resembles the RTP figure.
Frequently asked questions
- What does 9/6 mean in video poker?
- It is what a full house and a flush pay per coin wagered. On a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine a full house pays 9 and a flush pays 6, giving a return of 99.54% with optimal play. The same game at 8/5 returns 97.30%, so those two numbers tell you most of what you need to know about a machine.
- Which video poker game has the best return?
- Full-pay Deuces Wild returns 100.76% with perfect play, which is above break-even, but such machines are nearly extinct and the strategy punishes any error. Among games you can actually find, 9/6 Jacks or Better at 99.54% is the practical best.
- Is video poker better than slots?
- Mathematically yes, and the gap is wide. A video poker pay table is printed on the machine and its return is computable to two decimal places, while a slot machine's return is not disclosed to the player at all. A 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54%; typical slot returns sit well below that.
- Why do I have to bet five coins?
- Because the royal flush pays 800 per coin at five coins and only 250 per coin below that. Betting fewer coins costs about 1.5 percentage points of return, so playing a lower denomination at five coins is always better than a higher denomination played short.