The importance of pay tables

Bob Dancer, the leading video poker authority, says the most important thing a player can do to improve his results is to become familiar with pay tables. I saw a stark example of this last week at the Rio.

I went there to play my free play on the best game that casino has for dollars, 8/5 bonus poker. This game pays back a maximum of 99.17 percent. (The Rio has at least one better game, 9/6 jacks or better with a slightly reduced payout for the straight flush, which pays back a maximum of 99.52 percent, but at a minimum denomination of $5.)

I sat down and noticed an older man next to me playing rather tentatively. I glanced at his screen to see what he was playing. It was 8/5 jacks or better, which pays back a maximum of 97.30 percent.

I suddenly realized that the pay tables for 8/5 bonus poker and 8/5 jacks or better are exactly the same, except that jacks or better pays $125 for all four-of-a-kinds, but bonus poker pays $400 for four aces and $200 for four 2s, 3s or 4s.

Video poker players usually think of comparing different pay tables of the same game, not of different games. In fact, it can be very difficult to make a meaningful comparison between pay tables of different games. But in this case, the games are so similar that no specialized knowledge or resources would have been required. You can look at the two pay tables and see that they are exactly the same, except that one pays a bonus on certain four-of-a-kinds, and the other doesn't.

By the way, these bonuses are not insignificant. I didn't see what denomination my neighbor was playing for, but if it was quarters at maximum bet, the difference for four aces would be $68.75. For four 2a, 3s or 4s it would be $18.75. At dollars, the differences would be $275 for the aces and $75 for the 2s, 3s or 4s.

The lesson here is not that you should go through all the pay tables on a machine, trying to compare each line. That would be awfully time consuming and not very productive, because very few video poker games are as similar as jacks or better and bonus poker. For example, the deuces wild games have much lower payout for most hands than the games based on jacks or better. That is not because they are worse games (in fact, several deuces games pay back more than the best versions of jacks and bonus poker) but because the hands come up more frequently with the wild cards, and because of the big jackpot for four deuces in these games.

Fortunately, the games can easily be compared by overall payback if you have a video poker computer program such as Video Poker for Winners, or the Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide, an small, inexpensive paperback book.

A player who has spent some time studying pay tables would know that 8/5 bonus poker is the best version of that game and that 8/5 jacks is a terrible version of that game. And that's all you need to know to make a decision to play one or the other.