6 of the Best Video Poker Games

When you log into your Springbok online casino account to play poker, you want to maximize your time to achieve optimal payouts and enjoy a challenging and fruitful gaming event. While some games have variations that are very similar to one another, there are significant differences between video poker variations.  

There are also differences between video poker and slots - one difference between them is that with a slot machine, you just deposit your wager, press the button and hope for the best. In video poker there’s an extra step that adds an element of decision-making to the process. You  are asked to decide which cards to keep and which ones to trade in. There are 32 different ways to play each hand so you have multiple choices facing you in every video poker hand.

Before choosing your machine you should be familiar with a video poker pay table. Pay tables vary from one game to the next and these payback tables make a difference in the payback percentage.

To get the best games with the best payback percentages, read on:

Jacks or Better

You can find Jacks or Better Poker right here at Springbok. It’s one of the most popular forms of video poker, partly because it’s one of the most basic poker games available. Jacks or Better is based on 5 card draw. The player is dealt 5 cards and then chooses which ones to keep and which ones to throw away. Payout is based on the poker hand ranking of the end result. A pair of tens or less doesn't pay out anything as the lowest-paying hand is a pair of jacks or higher. The highest-paying hand is a royal flush. On a bet of five coins per hand a  royal flush will pay off at 800 to 1.  (Hint: It pays to play max coins because if you bet 4 coins or fewer, it only pays out 250 to 1)

Casinos normally adjust the payoffs only on 2 hands for this game – the flush and a full house. When they pay off at 9 and 6 there’s a 99.54% payback percentage which are some of the best odds in the house.

Strategy in this game is fairly straightforward. There are basic strategy charts for this game online and the strategy isn't that hard to learn.

Jacks or Better is a basic video poker game so once you learn the strategy for this game, almost every other video poker game in the casino is easy to learn.

Deuces Wild Poker

Deuces Wild plays almost exactly like Jacks or Better with one difference --  the 2s are wild cards. This means any 2 can substitute for any card you need to fill your hand. The odds of filling a hand skyrocket with the addition of the wild cards so to offset the advantage, Deuces Wild doesn’t have a payout for anything less than 3 of a kind.

One difference between Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better involves the structure of the pay tables.  In Deuces Wild, there are multiple payoffs on multiple hands so choosing a pay table is harder. There are Deuces Wild games with better payouts than Jacks or Better. Full pay Deuces Wild offers a 100.76% (!) payback percentage.

Bonus Poker 

Bonus Poker is also sometimes called “Mystery Bonus Poker.”  It’s similar to Jacks or Better in that there are no wild cards and the lowest-paying hand is still a pair of jacks or better.  As with Jacks or Better, pay off is 800 to 1 for a royal flush.

The difference between Jacks and Better and Bonus Poker is that pay outs for 4 of a kind is pretty big. In a Jacks or Better game, the payoff for 4 of a kind pays off 25 to 1. In Bonus Poker the pay off is based on the rank of the cards:

• 4 aces offer a pay off of 80 to 1.
• 4 deuces, 3s, or 4s, pay off is 40 to 1.
• All other 4 of a kinds pay off is 25 to 1

Payout for the bonuses on the 4 of a kind hands adjusts the payoffs on the flush and the full house while a full pay Bonus Poker game pays off at 5 to 1 and 8 to 1 respectively.  That reduces the payback percentage to under 98%, though you get some of that back with the bonus payouts for the 4 of a kind.

These elements make Bonus Poker a more volatile game. You don’t often see the extra percentage points that come from 4 of a kind hands.

In addition, Bonus Poker differs from regular poker in that, when you look at a 4 of a kind at a traditional poker table, the better hands have higher ranked cards. For instance, a 4 of a kind made up of 5s beats a 4 of a kind made up of 4s.

But in (Mystery) Bonus Poker, you get paid almost twice as much for that 4 of a kind made up of 4s as you do for a 4 of a kind made up of 5s.

Double Bonus Poker

Double Bonus Poker is the best option to get an edge over the house when playing video poker. Reading the pay table we see that the payback percentage on Double Bonus Poker is 100.17%. The game is similar to Bonus Poker but:

• You get 160 to 1 for 4 aces instead of 80 to 1.
• You get to 80 to 1 for 4 deuces instead of 40 to 1.
• You get 50 to 1 for 4 of a kind instead of 25 to 1.

Double Bonus Poker has another difference over Bonus Poker. The payouts for the flush and the full house are higher than in Jacks or Better. Those hands pay out at 10 to 1 and 7 to 1 on a full pay Double Bonus Poker game.

Keep in mind that the casino reduces the payoff for 2 pairs from 2 to 1 to even money. Cutting the payoff for it in half frees up a lot of money to add to those other hands since that hand comes up about once in every 8 hands.

So Double Bonus Poker is more volatile than Bonus Poker but that’s what makes it so much fun. 

Loose Deuces Wild Poker

Loose Deuces Wild has about as much claim to being a "different" game from Deuces Wild as Bonus Poker does to being a different game from Jacks or Better. The only real difference is the extra payoff amount on the 4 of a kind hand consisting of 2s.

The standard payoff for a 4 of a kind made up of deuces is 200 to 1.  In Loose Deuces, it's 500 to 1.

That's a huge difference, but keep in mind that every time you get something extra from a video poker game, you're losing something somewhere in order to pay for it.

In the most common versions of Loose Deuces, though, the major difference is in the payoff for the straight flush. In a more-or-less standard Deuces Wild game, that hand pays off at 9 to 1. On most Loose Deuces games, it pays off at 8 to 1.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even though a 500 to 1 payoff is great, the odds of getting a 4 of a kind made up of all deuces is relatively small. It's still about 10 times as likely as a natural royal flush, though.

If you can master the correct strategy for this game - which is actually pretty close to the correct strategy for full pay Deuces Wild - you can enjoy a game with a large payback percentage that's comparable to some of the other positive expectation games on this list. I've seen sites listing pay tables for Loose Deuces Wild games where the expected return was 101.60%, but you're a lot more likely to find a game with a 100.15% payback percentage or even 99.2%.

Any of those games are worth playing - it's just that some of them are better than others.

Pick'em Poker

Pick ‘em Poker, also sometimes called Pick a Pair Poker, is one of the most interesting poker variations.  The gameplay is quite different and with the right paytable you’ll enjoy a payback percentage of 99.95%.

You start with 2 cards and are then dealt two more hands.  Now you decide which 2 of those 4 cards to keep. After you return your trade - in cards the machine deals 2 more cards for your final hand.

Pick ‘em Poker is like a video poker version of stud poker. Strategy is easy to learn for this game, making this one of the fastest-paced and most interesting video poker machines.