Building a Video Poker Foundation With Jacks or Better

Published: December 26, 2013

Players who want to get started in video poker should do so with Jacks or Better. Some people think that Jacks or Better is kind of a boring game because it doesn't have any bells or whistles or tricky paytables that are hard to remember. You'll have to form your own opinion on that, but if you're wanting to learn to play video poker in general on a high level, then Jacks or Better is what you should be studying. This is a game that is all about basics and fundamentals, and those are the two things needed for building a solid foundation in video poker.

The way you think about video poker is one of the key parts of that foundation. Some people play the game trying to make big hands, and that's all they think about. That is an incorrect and costly way of playing. Instead, you should be looking to maximize the value of the five cards that are put in front of you by choosing the right combination of discards. Those discards are your only real strategic decision in video poker, and that's what you should focus on.

A lot of the time, the correct group of discards is pretty obvious. For example, if you're dealt AAJ53 with no possible draws, it's blatantly obvious that you should keep the pair of aces and discard the other three cards. However, there are a lot of situations as well where the correct discard isn't that obvious. These tend to involve scenarios where you have two possible draws to go for or a choice between a made hand and a draw. You can learn to make these decisions on a basic level by learning what are called priority levels.

For example, three to a royal flush draw has a higher priority level than four to a regular flush, and four to a royal flush has a higher priority than a made flush. A made flush is better than a high pair, a high pair is better than a straight draw, and a straight draw is better than a low pair. These priority levels are the key to playing on a high level most of the time for new players. As time goes on, you can learn exceptions to these priority levels and use that to expand your foundation until you're playing near-perfect video poker.