How Low-End Compensation Affects Your Play in Video Poker

Published: June 26, 2014

Video poker paytables all have one thing in common: If you add something in one area, you have to take away value in another. You see this all the time with games like Aces and Faces which is just a variation of Jacks or Better with extra payouts. There are extra pays added to the top end of the paytable, and low-end compensation creates a situation where the more common hands at the lower end of the paytable are given smaller payouts to balance things out. Your play will sometimes be affected by this shift in value, and we want to show you how it can play out.

The standard non-wild payout schedule includes payouts for single pair hands of jacks or higher. This is one of the places where value can be cut from the bottom of the payout table by changing which pairs get a payout and which do not. In some types of Joker Poker for example, you'll drop the pays for jacks or queens and can only get payouts for a pair of kings or aces. There are also games on the flip side like Tens or Better where an extra pair payout is added with payouts lowered from mid-range hands to compensate.

Unless you have more than one or two wild cards, your play isn't going to vary much in most cases except you'll need to pay attention to which cards are considered high cards and which are not. For example, if you're playing Joker Poker where you need kings or better, then there's only one wild in the deck, and you need to adjust for the fact that kings and aces are the only "high cards" in the game. This is something that a lot of people make simple mistakes about just because they forget which game they're playing, and this is more likely if you play multiple types of video poker on a regular basis, so just be careful with it.

Sometimes you'll have a game where there are no payouts for single pairs, and you'll need to adjust your strategies accordingly. In these games, knowing how to play the different types of draws is a pretty big deal because all single pair hands have the same value. Typically speaking, open-ended straight draws will be stronger than pairs, so flush draws will be as well, and play proceeds along these lines.