The Definitive Guide to All American Video Poker

Published: July 24, 2014

All American Video Poker is a game that tricks a lot of good players into playing suboptimal strategies because its paytable has one very interesting feature that changes a lot of the key decisions that you probably know as a part of solid video poker fundamentals. In this game, flushes, straights and full houses all get the same 8x payout. What this means is that your draws are going to be worth a lot more money, and you'll have to deal with that accordingly by adjusting from your typical strategies.

Normally if you have a choice between a high pair and a flush draw, you take the high pair. In this game, however, that's a sizable mistake. On average, a high pair is going to be worth a payout of about 1.41x on average, and taking a flush draw with a single high card is worth about 1.57x, so you can see that the flush draw is superior here. If you add a second high card, then it jumps to 1.64x. This has an interesting effect on the game where flush draws are better than all single pair hands, something that goes completely against the grain for video poker players.

The comparisons between single pair hands and open-ended straight draws is a little more interesting because it's less cut and dry. A open-ended straight draw is always better than a small pair, but with high pairs, it's a little complicated. If your open-ended straight draw is going to have just one high card (ie: JT98), then it's better to go for the high pair by a small margin. We're talking about a 1.408x payout against a 1.404x payout. With two or more high cards in your open-ended straight draw, it's always better than a high pair by much more significant margins.

There's one more somewhat common situation that you need to know about when switching over to All American. Typically in video poker if you have three cards to a royal flush, that's a stronger hand than four cards to a regular flush. In All American, this is no longer the case. For example, if you have AhQhTh5h4d, discarding the 4d will get you a 1.66x average payout while discarding both the 4d and the 5h will give you just a 1.38x payout. Even if all three of your royal cards can make a high pair with something like AhKhQh, it's still only a 1.48x average payout.