Video poker is one of the most popular online casino games today. It is basically like playing poker on your computer. The first video poker game came out back in the 1970s, and was a combination of two popular games: slots and poker. The game quickly became popular because it gave players the option of playing on a machine instead of at a standard casino. When the online casino arrived, it was natural for video poker to find its way into the list of games.
Video poker has been around since the time the first personal computers appeared on the market in the mid 70s. It originated as a computerized way to play poker, with a game very similar to Five Card Draw, and caught on quickly among gamblers who preferred to play video poker at a machine console rather than the standard game at a casino table. Although the early versions of video poker were quite primitive by today’s standards, as the game grew more and more popular it also developed in sophistication. When online casinos were developed twenty years later, video poker was a natural choice to include in the list of games offered, and nowadays almost every online casino has several versions.
Over the years, video poker has grown increasingly sophisticated and today, you get a wide range of video poker games online. The standard game is played using a 52-card deck. The presence of the joker in the pack depends of the game being played; some have it, others don't. You get both single and multiple deck video poker games now. There are up to 50 different games, depending on the online casino you are playing at and the software powering it.
Video poker is available at online casinos in South Africa as well. At these online casinos, you can play these games in both practice and real money modes.
On this page you can find the following information about video poker games:
There are a number of South African online casinos that offer a good spread of video poker games. Some of them also offer bonuses for the video poker games on offer. The following are our pick of the Top 5 South African real money video poker casinos.
Casino.com is a superb online casino for South African fans from the Mansion Group. This casino is licensed and regulated by the Government of Gibraltar. It uses software from Playtech to offer hundreds of exciting games, including video poker to its members.
The video poker games at Casino.com include Aces and Faces, Aces and Faces 25 Line, Deuces Wild, Deuces Wild 4 Line, 2 Ways Royal, Joker Poker, Joker Poker 50 Line, Megajacks, 10's or Better, Genie's Hi-Lo, Pai Gow Poker, and All American. The video poker games at this casino are not included in the welcome bonus offer.
Thunderbolt Casino is a RTG-powered casino for South African online casino fans. This casino is owned by Merus (UK) Ltd and offers more than 200 exciting games, including video poker, to its players.
The video poker games at Thunderbolt casino include:
Thunderbolt casino offers a welcome bonus of 100% up to R1500 on each of the first five deposits at the casino for video poker fans. The wagering requirement for this bonus is a 30x play through plus the bonus amount. To meet the wagering requirements for withdrawal, only play on video poker, multi-hand video poker, and video poker variations is considered. High rollers playing video poker are also eligible for an up to R40,000 high roller welcome bonus (200% up to R20,000 on each of the first two deposits, minimum deposit must be R5000).
There are different types of video poker games available at online casinos today. The games available may vary from casino to casino, depending on a number of factors, including the software provider. However, the most commonly found of these is Jacks or Better.
The game is called Jacks or Better for a simple reason: your final hand has to be at least a pair of jacks, or higher, for you to be able to get paid by the machine. The game is simple: there are no wild cards to complicate the mix. The pay tables for this game may have varying payouts for the flush and the straight hands. This game is good for newcomers to video poker. You play the game with four hands of cards.
The game is simple to play: Select the game from the list of games available to make it appear in a separate window. Next, decide how much you would like to wager. If you want to bet the maximum amount allowed, click the Bet Max option else click the Bet One option. Some casinos may also allow you to specify the size of your bet, and may even allow you to bet on specific winning combinations.
Of all the Jacks or Better games available, the best probably is the 'full pay' game. This game is also known as the 9/6 game and is not one of the commonly found Jacks or Better games. The name 9/6 implies that you get paid at 9:1 for a flush and at 6:1 for a straight. What this effectively means is that if you bet $5 on a game and got a flush, you would get paid $45. The game has a 99.54% payback percentage, which makes it a good game to play. Other variations of Jacks or Better include 8/5 games and also 7/5 games, the name again signifying the payout.
The following are the different hands in Jacks or Better, in order of their ranks:
This is considered the second most common video poker game, after Jacks or Better. The game is like Jacks or Better, with one change: the deuces are wild, as the name suggests. There are some Deuces Wild games where you get 100% payback percentages, while others offer payback percentages on par or around the same offered by Jacks or Better.
The game itself is played with a 52-card deck. The 2 of the four different suits in the deck all act as wild cards. This changes the complexion of the game somewhat, because you can use the 2 to enhance the value of an existing hand. The minimum range for a win in this game would there be a three of a kind hand.
Joker Poker is considered one of the first variations of video poker. Unlike Jacks or Better, this game is played with a 53-card deck. The additional card in the deck is the joker, hence the name. You can use the joker in place of any card. The result again is different from what you would get in a Jacks or Better game; there would be more card combinations you could pull out with a joker in the hand.
The joker brought about a few changes: you could now have a five of a kind hand where the fifth card was the joker. The joker in a royal flush hand also created two royal flush hands now: the natural royal flush and the wild royal flush. The payback percentages for this variation of video poker are quite high as well.
There are of course many more varieties that the three listed here and most of our recommended casinos will have at least one version of each of the major varieties you see regularly ion land casinos.
An even better and personalized way of playing online casino games today is through your mobile device or tablet. Technology upgrades have seen a number of software providers coming out with mobile versions of their online casinos as well, and so a lot of casinos offer the mobile gaming option to their players.
You can play video poker on your mobile device, but the choices are rather limited compared to say slots. Most South African mobile casinos will offer only one or two video poker games.
The following table gives a comparison of the video poker games from different software providers.
| Software | Number of Games | Examples | Maximum number of Hands per game | Casino Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playtech | 13+ | Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, Megajacks, Deuces Wild | 50 | Casino.com |
| RTG | 15+ | Pick 'Em Poker, All American, Double Bonus, Sevens Wild | 100 | Springbok Casino |
| SkillOnNet | 16 | Jacks or Better, 25-Line Jacks or Better, 10-Line Jacks or Better, 3-Line Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, 25-Line Joker Poker, 10-Line Joker Poker, 3-Line Joker Poker, Deuces Wild, 25-Line Deuces Wild, 10-Line Deuces Wild, 3-Line Deuces Wild, Aces and Faces, 25-Line Aces and Faces, 10-Line Aces and Faces, 3-Line Aces and Faces | 25 | EU Casino |
| Rival | 7 | Jacks or Better, 10s or Better, Joker Poker, Double Joker, Deuces Wild, Deuces and Joker, Aces and Faces | 4 | |
| NetEnt | 6 | Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Classic Deuces Wild, Classic Jacks or Better, Joker Wild, All American | 100 |
Before playing video poker, there are a few terms you must be aware of. We take a look at a few such terms here:
There are odds for every game you play, and this holds true for video poker as well. This is one game where you have a degree of control in ensuring that the odds work in your favor. As you know, there are multiple forms of video poker at an online casino, and the game that you choose and the strategy you adopt for playing it has a big role in deciding whether the odds work in your favor or not.
The first step to increasing the odds while playing video poker, therefore, depends on which game you choose to play. The next thing of course is the strategy you adopt for the game variant you have chosen to play. When it comes to video poker, the odds of a particular hand appearing remains the same across all machines. This is unlike in slots, where the odds may vary depending on the machine as well. Your payout in video poker depends on which hand you land. Another factor that influences the odds of you landing the winning hand is the degree of probability of that hand appearing.
Let us take an example to understand this better. For instance, assume you are playing Jacks or Better, a game with a 99.54% payback percentage, and hoping to land a royal flush. What are the odds of that hand appearing for you? It is a staggering 1:40,390 or 0.002%. The payout for that hand is 4000 units. So what does this tell you? The greater the odds, the higher the payout you would get. The payout would be lesser for a hand where the odds are more balanced.
The term return to player or RTP refers to the percentage of money that an online casino pays back to a player over a period of time. It is the percentage of the money a player can hope to get back from the total money he has wagered at an online casino over time. Let us take an example to understand this better. Assume that you have placed 50 bets of R10 each on a game of jacks or Better, which has a return percentage of 99.54. What this means is that the player can expect to get back 99.54% of the R500 he has wagered in all. Of course, this works only if you are able to play each hand optimally.
The RTP is directly related to the house advantage for a game. If a game offers a 10% house advantage, it merely means that it will have a RTP of approximately 90%.
There are two terms you need to understand when it comes to video poker: full pay video poker games and short pay video poker games. A full pay video poker game is the highest paying variant of a specific video poker game. Full pay games usually have a high payback percentage. Take for instance the game of Jacks or Better; the full pay version of this game has a payback percentage close to 100% (99.54%).
There are many good things about video poker, and one of the best is that it is one game where you know the returns you can expect from a machine even before you play. This is because of the pay table. If you know how to read a pay table, you can select the machine that gives you the best returns when you want to play video poker.
Let us take an example to understand this better. Take for instance the game of Jacks or Better. The following pay table lists out the returns you can expect from different variants of the game. The column on the left lists the game and the one on the right lists the expected returns.
| Jacks or Better Variant | Payback Percentage |
|---|---|
| 9/6 | 99.54 |
| 9/5 | 98.45 |
| 8/6 | 98.39 |
| 8/5 | 97.30 |
| 7/5 | 96.15 |
| 6/5 | 95.00 |
From the above table it is apparent that you can safely play the 9/6 or full pay variant of Jacks or Better as it has the highest payback percentage among all the variants listed.