Video poker is the only game in a casino lobby where the entire mathematical return is printed on the screen before you play, in a form you can verify yourself. There is no hidden RTP setting, no volatility rating you have to take on faith, no provider variant selected behind the scenes. The paytable is the game.
It is also the game where players most consistently ignore that information. Two machines running what appears to be the same title, side by side, with identical artwork and identical rules, can differ in return by more than four percentage points — and the only visible difference is two numbers in the payout column.
Why the paytable is the whole calculation
In a slot, the return is determined by reel weightings you cannot see. In video poker, the deck is a standard 52 cards, the hand rankings are fixed, and the probability of every possible draw is computable. The only variable is what each hand pays.
This means the return of any video poker machine can be calculated exactly, by anyone, from the paytable alone. Published return figures for standard variants have been stable for decades because the maths does not change — which is why comparing the payout column across machines is a genuinely useful exercise, and why paytables displayed clearly before you commit a coin, as they are at https://caswinoaustralia.com and other platforms that show full pay schedules in the game preview, are worth more than any description of the game.
The two numbers that carry most of the weight are the full house and flush payouts. They are quoted as a pair — “9/6” means the full house pays 9 and the flush pays 6, per coin bet.
The variants, and what they return
The figures below are for Jacks or Better with optimal play, five coins bet.
| Paytable | Full house | Flush | Return with optimal play | Common name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 | 9 | 6 | 99.54% | Full pay |
| 9/5 | 9 | 5 | 98.45% | — |
| 8/6 | 8 | 6 | 98.39% | — |
| 8/5 | 8 | 5 | 97.30% | Short pay |
| 7/5 | 7 | 5 | 96.15% | — |
| 6/5 | 6 | 5 | 95.00% | Worst common variant |
Four and a half percentage points separate the top and bottom rows. In cost-per-hour terms at $1.25 per hand and 400 hands an hour, a 9/6 machine costs about $2.30 an hour in expectation; a 6/5 machine costs about $25. Same game, same screen, same speed.
Other variants shift the picture further. Bonus Poker at 8/5 returns around 99.17%. Double Bonus at 10/7 has historically returned slightly over 100% with perfect play, and full-pay Deuces Wild sits around 100.76% — figures which explain why those paytables are extremely rare online and, where they appear, usually come with adjusted payouts elsewhere in the schedule. Never assume a variant name guarantees a return; read the actual numbers.
The five-coin rule
This one costs players more than any strategy error.
On virtually every video poker machine, the royal flush pays 250 per coin on bets of one to four coins, and 800 per coin on a five-coin bet. That jump is not proportional — it is a bonus that only exists at maximum coins.
Playing four coins instead of five drops the return of a 9/6 machine from 99.54% to roughly 98.4%. The correct response is not to bet more than you are comfortable with; it is to drop to a lower denomination and still play five coins. Five coins at $0.25 costs the same as one coin at $1.25 and returns over a percentage point more.
Strategy is assumed in every quoted figure
Every return number above assumes optimal play on every hand, and optimal play in video poker is genuinely non-obvious. The decision of which cards to hold is a comparison of expected values across up to 32 possible holds, and the correct answer is frequently counterintuitive — breaking a made flush to chase a royal, holding a single high card over a low pair in specific situations, discarding a made straight in others.
Played by instinct, the effective return of a 9/6 machine falls to roughly 97–98%. That is a larger loss than choosing a worse paytable, which puts the two errors in perspective: paytable selection and strategy accuracy matter about equally, and both are needed for the quoted number to apply.
Strategy charts for the common variants are widely published and specific to each paytable. A chart for 9/6 Jacks or Better is slightly wrong for 8/5, because the changed payouts shift some marginal decisions.
The errors that cost the most
- Playing fewer than five coins. Costs over a percentage point immediately. Lower the denomination instead.
- Not checking the full house and flush numbers. The single highest-value ten seconds available in the lobby.
- Assuming variant names are consistent. “Bonus Poker” covers several different pay schedules.
- Using a generic strategy chart. Charts are paytable-specific.
- Chasing the royal flush. It occurs roughly once in 40,000 hands and is already priced into the return figure. Playing longer to reach it does not improve your odds of getting there sooner.
- Playing side bets or progressive add-ons without checking their effect on the base return, which is usually negative.
Where video poker sits relative to slots
The comparison is favourable and worth making precisely. A well-chosen video poker machine played with correct strategy returns 99%+ against a typical slot’s 96%. At the same stake and pace, that is a fourfold difference in hourly cost.
The trade-offs are real, though. Video poker requires continuous decision-making, which most players find less relaxing than slots. The variance is high — royals are rare and a large part of the return is concentrated in them — so a session on a 99.5% machine can still empty a small bankroll. And full-pay schedules are considerably harder to find online than in land-based venues, where the format originated.
For anyone who enjoys the decision element, though, the arithmetic is clear: it is the lowest-cost format in most lobbies, provided you read the paytable and play the chart. Both of those conditions are doing real work in that sentence.
A closing note that belongs in any honest piece on this subject: even a full-pay machine played perfectly returns less than 100% in almost every commonly available variant, and the games are designed to produce that result over time. Set a budget you are entirely comfortable losing, decide your stop point in advance, and step away when you reach it. Gambling is for adults 18+ only, and free support services operate in every Australian state.