Instructive Deuces Wild Hands for Playing Draws Effectively

Published: November 27, 2014

Draws in Deuces Wild video poker can be particularly complicated, and playing them correctly is pretty hard to do on a consistent basis. We want to offer you some instructive hands to show you ideas and concepts that can help you in your own play. For a solid example, we're going to start with a very wild hand of 2c2d6h9hKs. Most people would think that they should simply discard the Ks and play with the straight flush. While that wouldn't be a completely horrible way of playing, it's actually better to keep the two deuces and discard everything else. This is anti-intuitive, but you should only play straight flush draws with two wilds if both of the non-wilds are consecutive.

Here's another fun and interesting example. Suppose you have a single wild card. What's the difference between playing with 2s5d6d8d5h and playing with 2s5d6d7d5h? You'll notice that the second straight flush draw has three consecutive non-wild cards while the first only has two. This makes the second a major straight flush draw and the latter a minor straight flush draw. With a major straight flush draw, you should break up the three of a kind and go for the draw. However, with a minor straight flush draw, you should keep the 5d5h2s combination for three of a kind.

On the subject of draws, let's take a look at a hand that can be played several different ways. Suppose we have AsJsJcTs4s. A lot of people who play a lot of non-wild games would be tempted to play with the JJ combination, but they forget that there are no payouts for single pair hands in Deuces Wild. This leads them to believe that the right play is to discard the Jc and go for the flush draw. While this is a viable option, it's not correct.

Instead, you should actually play with the suited AJT combination. With no wild cards in your hand, three to a royal is better than four to a flush. Keep in mind that a pair is actually better than a bare flush draw in this game, but three to a royal is better than both. This simple rule can help you to play a lot of tricky scenarios like this accurately. Keep in mind that four to a straight flush trumps three to a royal when no wild cards are present as well.