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Video poker
first became commercially viable when it became economical to combine a
television-like monitor with a solid state central processing unit. The
earliest models appeared at the same time as the first personal
computers were produced, in the mid-1970s, although they were primitive
by today's standards.
Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stood for
Si Redd's Coin Machines, and which evolved over time to become
International Game Technology, introduced Draw Poker in 1979. Throughout
the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular in casinos, as people
found the devices less intimidating than playing table games. Today
video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many
casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend
to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip. These local casinos
often offer lower denomination machines or better odds, although this
was more common in the 1990s as casinos across the country have recently
been cutting their paytables and/or only offering 25 cent machines or
higher.
The Game
Game play in online casino begins by placing a bet of one or more credits, by inserting
money (or in newer machines, a barcoded paper ticket with credit) into
the machine, and then pressing a "Deal" button to draw cards. The player
is then given an opportunity to keep or discard one or more of the cards
in exchange for a new card drawn from the same virtual deck. After the
draw, the machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout if the hand
matches one of the winning hands in the posted pay schedule.
On a typical video poker machine, payouts start with a minimum hand of a
pair of jacks. Pay tables allocate the payout for hands based partially
upon how rare they are, and also based upon the total theoretical return
the game operator chooses to offer.
Some machines offer progressive jackpots for the royal flush, (and
sometimes for other rare hands as well), thereby spurring players to
both play more coins and to play more frequently.
Regulation
Video poker machines operated in state-regulated jurisdictions are
programmed to deal random card sequences. A series of cards is generated
for each play; five dealt straight to the hand, the other five dealt in
order if requested by player. This is based upon a Nevada regulation,
adopted by most other states with a gaming authority, which requires
dice and cards used in an electronic game to be as random as the real
thing, within computational limits set by the gaming authority. Video
poker machines are tested to ensure compliance with this requirement
before they may be offered to the public. Video poker games in Nevada
are required to simulate a 52 card deck (or a 53 card deck if using a
joker).
It is unclear whether all video poker machines at Indian gaming
establishments are subject to the same Nevada-style regulations, as
Indian casinos are located on reservations that are sovereign to the
tribe which holds the gaming license.
Kinds of video poker
Newer video
poker machines may employ variants of the basic five-card
draw. Typical variations include Deuces Wild, where a two serves as a
wild card and a jackpot is paid for four deuces or a natural royal; pay
schedule modification, where four aces with a five or smaller kicker
pays an enhanced amount (these games usually have some adjective in the
title such as "bonus", "double", or "triple"); and multi-play poker,
where the player starts with a base hand of five cards, and each
additional played hand draws from a different set of cards with the base
hand removed. (Multi-play games are offered in "Triple Play", "Five
Play", "Ten Play", "Fifty Play" and even "One Hundred Play" versions.)
In the non-wild games (games which do not have a wild card) a player who
plays five or six hundred hands per hour, on average, may receive the
rare four-of-a-kind approximately once per hour, while a player may play
for many days or weeks before receiving an extremely rare royal flush.
Full pay games
Full pay video poker machines are games which offer the typical maximum
payback percentage for that game type. Payback percentage expresses the
long-term expected value of the player's wager as a percentage. A
payback percentage of 99 percent, for instance, indicates that for each
$100 wagered, in the long run, the player would expect to lose $1.
Payback percentages on full-pay games are often close to or even in
excess of 100 percent, assuming error-free perfect play.[4]
Full-pay Jacks or Better, for example, offers a payback percentage of
99.54 percent when played with perfect strategy. It must be remembered
that winning the jackpot (royal flush) is also part of the "long run" in
every variant. One should not play a "full pay" video poker game
expecting not to lose, because even over many thousands of hands played,
you are playing a game that pays back less than 100%.
Casinos often place full pay machines alongside other machines with pay
schedules that offer less attractive payback percentages, leaving it up
to the player to identify which video poker machines offer full pay
schedules.
Most full pay machines are configured with a pay schedule that is only
full pay when the maximum number of credits is bet.
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