How the game works
- Choose your stake, usually 1 to 5 coins. Play 5 coins: the royal flush pays 800 per coin at max bet instead of 250.
- You get five cards. Tap the ones to hold.
- Draw replaces the rest. The paytable pays your final hand.
Read the paytable first
The name 9/6 means a full house pays 9 and a flush 6 per coin. Casinos cut the return by lowering these two lines.
| Paytable | Full house | Flush | RTP with perfect play |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 (full pay) | 9 | 6 | 99.54% |
| 8/6 | 8 | 6 | 98.39% |
| 8/5 | 8 | 5 | 97.30% |
| 7/5 | 7 | 5 | 96.15% |
| 6/5 | 6 | 5 | 95.00% |
Holding the right cards
- Hold any paying hand of four cards or better, and a royal flush draw of four cards over everything except a made royal, straight flush or four of a kind.
- Hold a made straight, flush or full house.
- Hold three of a kind, two pair, or a high pair (jacks to aces).
- Hold four to a flush, then a low pair, then four to an open-ended straight.
- With nothing, hold two or three high cards of the same suit, or up to two high cards of different suits.
- With no high cards and no draws, discard everything.
Budget and pace
Video poker is fast: 400 to 600 hands an hour is normal. On a 9/6 table at K 5 a hand, the long-run cost is about 0.46%, so 500 hands cost about K 11 on average, but the swings are much bigger than that, mostly driven by how often the royal flush lands (about once in 40,000 hands).