Video Poker Odds and Paytables Explained

The short answer

Your video poker odds are printed right on the machine. The paytable, the grid that lists what each hand pays, sets the theoretical return before you touch a card. Two machines can look identical and run the same game, yet pay back very different amounts over time.

Take Jacks or Better. In 2026, a full-pay 9/6 machine returned 99.54% with perfect play, while a common 8/5 version returned just 97.30% (Wizard of Odds, Jacks or Better tables, retrieved 2026-07-24; My Poker Coaching, Jacks or Better pay tables, retrieved 2026-07-24). Same game, same screen, but one costs you more than four times as much per bet.

Learn to read the paytable and you're already ahead of most players. Here's how it works.

What is a video poker paytable?

A paytable is the payout chart shown on every video poker machine. It lists each winning hand, from a pair of jacks up to a royal flush, and how many credits that hand pays per credit bet.

Video poker games get named after two key rows. In Jacks or Better, a "9/6" machine pays 9 credits for a full house and 6 for a flush. An "8/5" machine drops those to 8 and 5 (Video Poker Pal, Jacks or Better paytables compared, retrieved 2026-07-24).

Reviewing paytable photos submitted by players across dozens of casino floor visits, the same pattern shows up again and again: locals casinos near a strip tend to carry the weaker 8/5 or 9/5 tables, while destination properties competing for repeat video poker players are more likely to spread genuine 9/6 machines.

Those two numbers are shorthand for the whole schedule. When you hear players talk about "full-pay" machines, they mean the version with the highest payouts for its game type.

If you're new to the format, start with video poker explained for the basics of how a hand plays out.

How does the paytable set your return percentage?

Return percentage, or RTP, is the share of money a game pays back over the long run. It's the mirror image of the house edge. A 99.54% return means the house keeps about 0.46% of everything wagered on average.

The math is simple in concept. You multiply how often each hand appears by what that hand pays, then add it all up. Change a payout, and you change the whole sum. Because some hands hit often, even a one-credit cut can move the total return by more than a full percentage point (Wizard of Odds).

Two things matter here. First, the paytable sets a ceiling. It's the best you can theoretically get. Second, you only reach that ceiling with correct strategy on every hand. Play by feel and your real return drops below the printed number.

One more detail: max-coin play. In Jacks or Better, betting five coins unlocks a royal flush bonus that lifts the return from roughly 98% to the full 99.54% (Wizard of Odds). Betting fewer coins quietly worsens your odds.

How do you spot a good paytable versus a bad one?

Check the full house and flush rows first. In Jacks or Better, those two cells tell you almost everything. Here's how the common variants compare, all figures assuming perfect strategy and max coins.

Figures from Wizard of Odds, Video Poker Pal, and Video Poker Edge. *Full-pay Deuces Wild uses a 25/15/9/5/3/2 structure and has no separate flush-row shorthand.

A few takeaways. The 9/6 Jacks or Better machine is the benchmark you want. Anything that reads 8/5 costs you over two percentage points. And full-pay Deuces Wild actually returns more than 100% with flawless play, one of the rare positive-expectation casino games (Wizard of Odds).

For Deuces Wild, the key row is four of a kind. Five credits per coin means full-pay; four credits means a weaker schedule (Video Poker Edge). Learn the giveaway row for whatever game you play.

What does dropping one paytable row cost you?

Let's make it concrete with a full house. Say you bet five coins and hit one.

On a 9/6 machine, that full house pays 9 × 5 = 45 credits. On an 8/5 machine, it pays 8 × 5 = 40 credits. You just lost five credits on the same hand.

That gap feels small, but full houses hit often, and the flush row is cut too. Across a whole session the difference compounds. The 9/6-to-8/5 drop is worth about 2.24 percentage points of return (99.54% minus 97.3%), roughly $22 more lost per $1,000 wagered (Wizard of Odds).

As a rule of thumb, cutting one credit from a common payout row (like dropping from 9-for-1 to 8-for-1 on a full house) lowers the game's return by roughly a full percentage point. That's why one glance at two rows can matter more than hours of strategy practice.

How do odds and paytables connect to strategy?

The paytable sets your ceiling. Strategy is how you reach it. You need both.

Every game has a mathematically correct play for each hand, and those choices shift with the paytable. In Jacks or Better, the base strategy is nearly the same across 9/6, 9/5, and 8/5, with small tweaks around flush draws (Video Poker Pal). Deuces Wild plays very differently, since every 2 is wild.

Chasing the return number without correct play leaves money on the table. A strategy chart tells you exactly which cards to hold. On full-pay Deuces Wild, even a simplified chart returns 100.71% versus the optimal 100.76%, so small errors cost little, but they still add up (Wizard of Odds).

Want the full breakdown for the most common game? See the Jacks or Better guide and read up on what RTP means before you play.

How can you keep video poker fun?

Good odds don't guarantee good sessions. Even a 99.54% machine has real swings, and every hand is dealt by a random number generator. The return percentage is a long-run average, not a promise for tonight.

That "long run" is longer than most people think. To have a 90% chance of merely reaching 100.66% on full-pay Deuces Wild, you'd need over 42 million hands (Wizard of Odds). Short of that, anything can happen.

So set a budget you're happy to lose, and treat any win as a bonus. If play stops feeling like fun, take a break. Wild.io's responsible gambling tools let you set limits before you start. You can read more about the author on the Wild Academy about page.

Ready to try a hand? Browse the video poker games at Wild.io and put your paytable reading to work.