In essence, winning at video poker is a combination of strategy, understanding, and smart selection, alongside a dash of luck. Every machine is different, and a keen eye for favorable pay tables can be really useful. Pay attention to machines that offer better pay tables, as they provide increased potential returns, boosting your profitability. They act as your strategic blueprint when deciding which cards to hold and which to discard.įor beginners, a clear understanding of different hand values and their corresponding payouts is essential. Pay tables dictate the value of each hand. It involves delving deeper into the game’s strategy, starting with the pay tables. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network.Understanding how to win at video poker extends beyond simply grasping the game’s basic rules. This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. He is the host of the website and the editor of the Blackjack Insider newsletter. Henry Tamburin is a blackjack and video poker expert. For further details on this terrific program for players who want to learn how to be skilled at video poker, read Paymar’s article in issue #146 of BJI (go to click on Newsletters, then scroll down and click on issue #146). Two other nice features about this program is that Paymar provides the technical support for the software and he will send users updates to the program, and OpVP is available for Windows and Mac operating systems. Note from Henry: Think of OpVP as a video poker trainer and analyzer that will also allow you to do bankroll calculations.
Other features were added, such as the strategy generator, strategy chart evaluator, and Cost of a Royal calculation.Īlthough the game can still be played just for fun, OpVP is designed to provide all the tools you need to improve your skills and protect your bankroll. The player could then change his hold if desired and press Draw again to actually make the play, but the History would still tally the original error. It would beep and highlight the best play in green and the player's hold in red or, if the player's hold were not found in the chart, it would highlight "Not a valid hold" at the bottom of the chart. If the player had not made the correct hold, however, it would continue down the chart to find the hand type that had been held.
If so, then play would continue as on a casino video poker machine. Then, when the player selected the cards to hold and pressed the Draw button, it would check whether those cards had been held. For each play, the program would scan down the chart to find the first chart entry describing a hold that was available in the dealt hand.
However, more importantly, Frank had been manager of the biggest video poker slot team ever in Las Vegas in the '90s, and Frank and his mother had developed highly effective techniques for training prospective team players.īut how could those specialized techniques be used in a computer program? After much discussion, we came up with the concept of displaying a strategy chart next to the game window and checking the player's choice of held cards against the chart. The first thing Frank did was introduce me to the Linux operating system and help me upgrade my REALbasic to a current version. That was fine for my own use, but it would build an application only for the Classic Mac platform.Ībout that time, I met a professional video poker player and contributing writer to Henry Tamburin’s "Blackjack Insider Newsletter," Frank Kneeland, and little did I know how the course of the development would be affected by the fortuitous meeting. The initial work was on a Mac, using a programming language called FutureBasic. I started writing about video poker strategies in 1992, but there was no good analysis program available at the time so I started working on such a program for my own use. The program also does a lot more, and rather than having me describe all its features and how he came about to develop the program, I’ll let Dan do it. The program alerts you when you make a playing mistake and keeps track of your playing accuracy.
You pop the CD program into your home computer and you can practice playing any video poker game. My good friend Dan Paymar has an excellent software training program that he markets called Optimum Video Poker (OpVP).