Beginners
Two machines can run the same game and pay back wildly different amounts. The pay table on the glass tells you which, and learning to read it is the single most profitable habit in video poker.
Games are named by two key payouts. In Jacks or Better it is the full house and flush: 9/6 means 9 per coin for a full house and 6 for a flush. Those two numbers move the return more than any other, so players use them as shorthand for the whole table.
| Table | Full house | Flush | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 Jacks or Better · Full pay. The one to find. | 9 | 6 | 99.54% |
| 8/5 Jacks or Better · Common short pay. | 8 | 5 | 97.30% |
| 7/5 Jacks or Better · Avoid. | 7 | 5 | 96.15% |
| 6/5 Jacks or Better · Avoid. | 6 | 5 | 95.00% |
Same game, same strategy, but a 6/5 machine returns four and a half percent less than a 9/6 machine. Over a session that is real money. Always find the full-pay table.
A full-pay table is the best publicly available version of a game. A short-pay table trims the mid-tier payouts to lower the return. The hand rankings never change; only the payouts do. Because strategy barely shifts between them, a short-pay machine is simply a worse deal for the same effort.
Bonus and Double Bonus games pay more for four of a kind and less elsewhere, so their key numbers differ, but the idea holds: check the full house, flush, and quad payouts against a known full-pay table. Our best games page lists the full-pay returns for every common game, and each strategy page shows that game's exact pay table.
See the best games →