Video Poker
Jacks or Better — the one machine where your choices matter. Play it with your medals from the Medal Game Center and the exact value of every possible hold, then see how a “9/6” machine returns 99.54% and what each cheaper pay table gives up.
Video Poker now plays with your medals
This machine now plays with your medals from the Medal Game Center, the same medals as every other machine there. The 1,000 it used to start every visit with are gone, and were not added to your medals.
This table isn’t linked to the floor jackpot: play here doesn’t feed it or win it.
| Hand | 1 medal | 2 medals | 3 medals | 4 medals | 5 medals (current bet) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four of a Kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full House | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Medals are for playing the games on this site only. They are not money: they cannot be bought, cashed out or exchanged for anything.
Keys: 1–5 hold a card · Space or Enter deals and draws · B bet one · M bet max · D double up · T take · 1–4 pick a card
Best play
Press DEAL to start.
- Hands
- 0
- Net medals
- 0
- Returned
- –
- Best plays
- –
- Given up by other holds
- –
- The meters are in medals. Betting five medals is what unlocks the 4,000-medal royal.
- Never hold a kicker with a pair, and almost never break a paying pair — the panel shows why.
- The pay table changes the best play only in a few close hands.
Video poker deals from one honest 52-card deck, so everything can be counted: all 2,598,960 deals, each of the 32 ways to play them, and every card the draw could bring. With the best hold for every deal, that gives the machine’s exact return. Nothing on this tab is simulated, and nothing on it touches your medals.
Return with perfect play
At five medals a hand. Computed from the best of 32 holds for each of the 134,459 suit-distinct deals, weighted over all 2,598,960.
Where the return comes from
How often perfect play ends on each hand, and how much of the return it provides. The royal flush comes once in about 40,000 hands yet carries two percent of the return — in the short run you are playing a worse game than the label says.
| Hand | Share of return | Wins per medal | After the draw | 1 in | On the deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 2.0% | 800 | 0.0025% | 40,390.55 | 0.0002% |
| Straight Flush | 0.5% | 50 | 0.0109% | 9,148.37 | 0.0014% |
| Four of a Kind | 5.9% | 25 | 0.24% | 423.27 | 0.0240% |
| Full House | 10.4% | 9 | 1.15% | 86.86 | 0.14% |
| Flush | 6.6% | 6 | 1.10% | 90.79 | 0.20% |
| Straight | 4.5% | 4 | 1.12% | 89.05 | 0.39% |
| Three of a Kind | 22.4% | 3 | 7.44% | 13.43 | 2.11% |
| Two Pair | 26.0% | 2 | 12.93% | 7.74 | 4.75% |
| Jacks or Better | 21.6% | 1 | 21.46% | 4.66 | 13.00% |
| Nothing | — | 0 | 54.54% | 1.83 | 79.37% |
The same game at six prices
Machines differ in only two lines — what a full house and a flush win. Each medal taken off those lines costs about 1.1 points of return.
| Machine | Return | House edge | Full house / flush | Medals lost per 1,000 hands at 5 medals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 | 99.5439% | 0.46% | 9 / 6 | 22.8 |
| 9/5 | 98.4498% | 1.55% | 9 / 5 | 77.5 |
| 8/6 | 98.3927% | 1.61% | 8 / 6 | 80.4 |
| 8/5 | 97.2984% | 2.70% | 8 / 5 | 135.1 |
| 7/5 | 96.1472% | 3.85% | 7 / 5 | 192.6 |
| 6/5 | 94.9961% | 5.00% | 6 / 5 | 250.2 |
How many cards perfect play keeps
Most of the time the right play is two cards — usually a pair or two high cards. Throwing all five away is right about one hand in thirty.
Close calls
Five deals where instinct and arithmetic disagree: the exact value of the best play against the tempting one, on this pay table.
Calculating every draw…
FLOOR JACKPOT
This table isn’t linked to the floor jackpot. Its best play already brings back nearly every medal played, so play here neither feeds the floor jackpot nor draws for it. As on a real floor, not every cabinet is on the progressive.
Linked machines: Medal Pusher, Slot Machine, Calico Janken, Roulette & Martingale, Three Card Poker, Big Catch Harbor, Mini Turf Racing, Ball Bingo, Star Festival Big Wheel, High & Low Ladder, Moonlit Sic Bo, Whale Isle Sugoroku, Candy Shop Medal Maze, Video Keno, Hot Spring Smart Ball, Goldfish Lantern Pachinko, Cherry Blossom Carousel, Onsen Shooting Gallery.
Perfect play against two habits, on the same deals
Every strategy gets the same five cards and the same replacement cards on a 9/6 machine, betting five medals a hand. The return is shown per medal bet, so a royal flush counts as 800 per medal. The dashed lines are each strategy’s exact return. Nothing here touches your medals.
- Perfect play — The hold with the highest exact expectation, every hand.
- Common-sense rules — Keep a made straight or better; otherwise any pair, two pair or three of a kind; otherwise four to a flush; otherwise every jack or higher; otherwise draw five.
- Keep only what already pays — Hold a paying hand if you are dealt one; otherwise throw all five away.
One evening at the machine
Sessions of perfect play at five medals a hand on a 9/6 machine, played here with simulated medals. On average a session loses exactly what the return says — but that average is propped up by rare royal flushes, so the typical session does worse.