Калькулятор відеопокеру

Most video poker losses come down to two things: playing the wrong paytable and holding the wrong cards. This calculator handles the second problem. Enter your dealt hand, select your game, and it works out the mathematically optimal hold based on exact expected value across every possible draw from the remaining deck.

Fourteen game variants are supported, each with real-world paytable schedules. The return percentages shown are theoretical figures calculated against perfect play. And as always, feedback is welcome and appreciated below!

Як користуватися калькулятором

1. Select your game from the dropdown at the top of the paytable section.
2. Choose a paytable variant. The theoretical return percentage is shown next to each option so you know what you’re playing before you calculate.
3. Enter your five dealt cards using the hand builder. Click each card slot to pick a rank and suit.
4. Press Calculate. The calculator checks all 32 possible hold combinations and ranks them by expected value.
5. The optimal hold is highlighted at the top. All 32 holds are shown in order so you can compare alternatives.

Supported Video Poker Games

The games below cover the vast majority of video poker machines you’ll find in a casino and are selectable options in the calculator. They differ in wild cards, minimum paying hand, and how Four of a Kind payouts are structured.

Return percentages marked — vary by schedule and are not included where the figure cannot be independently verified against published sources.

Standard Games

These four games share the same core hand ranking structure. No wild cards, no rank-specific quad bonuses. The differences between them are in the minimum qualifying pair and how payouts are weighted across hand categories.

Bonus Variants

This group all share the same minimum qualifying pair (Jacks or Better) but offer elevated payouts on Four of a Kind depending on the rank of the quad. Two Pair typically pays 1-for-1 rather than 2 across this group, which is the tradeoff for the higher quad payouts. Variance increases significantly as you move down this list.

Understanding Paytable Variants

The same game title can appear on machines with several different paytable schedules. In Jacks or Better, the paytable name refers to the Full House and Flush payouts. A 9/6 machine pays 9-for-1 on a Full House and 6-for-1 on a Flush. A 6/5 machine pays 6-for-1 and 5-for-1. That single difference knocks 4.5 percentage points off the return, which on a $1 machine running 600 hands per hour works out to roughly $27 per hour in additional expected losses.

Hands Where Intuition Gets It Wrong

The most useful thing a calculator does is catch the situations where the obvious hold is not the optimal one. These come up more often than most players expect, and the EV difference can be significant. The game matters too — the right hold in Jacks or Better is not always the right hold in All American or Deuces Wild.

What Return Percentages Actually Mean

A 99.54% return means that over millions of hands at optimal play, you would expect to get back $99.54 for every $100 wagered. The house retains the remaining $0.46. In the short run, variance is enormous. A session of a few hundred hands can go anywhere, and the Royal Flush, which drives a meaningful portion of the long-run return, might not land for tens of thousands of hands.

Two things determine the return you actually experience:

• The paytable you play. A 9/6 machine and a 6/5 machine look identical from the outside. Always check the Full House and Flush payouts on screen before sitting down.
• How close you are to optimal play. Return percentages are calculated against perfect strategy on every hand. Consistent suboptimal holds reduce your actual return below the theoretical figure. The gap per hand is usually small, but it compounds across a long session.

Four games in this calculator have theoretical returns above 100% at their best available paytables: All American (100.72%), Deuces Wild (100.76%), Double Bonus Poker (100.17%), and Joker Poker (100.65%). A return above 100% means the long-run mathematical edge favors the player at that paytable. In practice, this does not mean you reliably win money in a session — variance is high enough that individual sessions swing far from the mean in both directions. It also means casinos rarely spread these games at full pay for long.