Video poker
Video poker, and the two numbers that tell you everything
Two video poker machines can carry the same name and pay differently, because the return of the game comes out of its paytable and nothing else. This page shows which two lines of the table to read and what the difference between them costs.
A paytable you can read?
Villento Casino
MGA · Kahnawake
Landing page: the operator’s Canadian home pageLanding page named in the operator's programme link sheet, 14 October 2026. We publish no amounts.
Open Villento CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
The one casino game whose price is fully determined
The price is printed on the machine. Video poker is the strangest object on a casino floor, because it is the only game in which a player can know the exact return of the machine in front of him before he stakes anything, and can know it without trusting a single claim made by anybody (ours included). The deck is fifty-two cards, the deal has no memory of the hand before it, and every outcome can be counted (every one of them, without exception).
That countability is what makes the game unusual, because nothing else on a casino floor can be priced exactly before it is played. There are two million five hundred and ninety-eight thousand nine hundred and sixty possible five-card hands (the number of ways to choose five cards from fifty-two), each of them with a determinable best draw, and multiplying every outcome by what the "paytable" pays for it gives the return of the machine to several decimal places (ninety-nine point five four, on the version below). No estimate, no sampling and no trust in anybody are required (we have taken nothing on this page from an operator’s sheet), which is rare enough on a casino floor to be worth a page of its own.
The consequence is that the paytable is not information about the game: it is the game. Two machines with the same name, the same artwork and the same rules can return ninety-nine and a half per cent and ninety-seven per cent respectively, and the difference is visible in two lines of a table printed on the face of each machine (the full house, and the flush).
We find this the most satisfying fact in the whole catalogue, and the one most completely ignored by the lobbies that carry it!
- Yes — read at the source and working as described
- Partly — it exists, with a condition that matters
- No — it does not exist, or the rules forbid it
- Not verified — we looked and could not establish it, and we say so
The two lines, and what they cost
Two lines, and the rest is decoration. The common shorthand for a "Jacks or Better" machine is a pair of numbers, as in "9/6" or "8/5", and they are the payouts for a full house and a flush per coin staked at the maximum (five coins, on most machines). Everything else on the table is usually identical between the two versions, which is why the shorthand works at all.
A nine-six machine, played with the correct "discard" on every hand, returns about ninety-nine and a half per cent. An eight-five machine, played identically well, returns about ninety-seven per cent (which is two and a half points less for a product that looks the same on the shelf). The reduction of one coin on the full house and one on the flush, applied across the frequency with which those two hands arrive (a full house about once in ninety hands, a flush about once in ninety more), costs you something over two percentage points of everything you stake, which is a great deal on a game whose whole margin is half a point.
Put that against the cost of a European roulette wheel at two point seven per cent, and the arithmetic arranges itself neatly, because the two prices now sit on the same scale: a full-pay video poker machine is the cheapest thing on the floor and a short-pay one is ordinary, while nothing about their appearance distinguishes them (same cabinet, same artwork). A player who learned only to read those two lines would have learned the whole of what this page has to teach.
Our hypothetical reader makes it concrete, because a percentage is easier to ignore than a sum of money. Staking two hundred dollars across an evening at a dollar a hand, he expects to lose about one dollar at nine-six and about six dollars at eight-five (a difference of five), which is the whole of what the two lines of the "paytable" are worth to him over one evening of identical play.
The condition attached to the figure
There is a condition. Both of those returns assume the mathematically correct discard on every hand, and that assumption is doing a great deal of work. The correct play is not obvious and frequently contradicts instinct: a low pair is held in preference to four cards of a flush in some situations and not in others (the chart says which), and a "royal flush" draw is kept over a made pair in circumstances you would have to look up.
A player who plays by "feel" gives back a substantial part of the margin he came for, since the chart exists precisely because instinct is wrong, which is why we would describe a full-pay machine as the cheapest game available to a prepared player rather than the cheapest game available. The preparation is a printed "strategy chart", it is free (every variant has one), and it takes an evening to become fluent with, which is a smaller investment than the two percentage points it recovers.
The second condition is the full "stake", and it is the one that catches people. The payout for a "royal flush" is disproportionately higher at five coins than at one, because the machine is built that way, so a machine played at a fraction of its stake pays a materially worse return than its advertised figure; the number printed on the face assumes the maximum.
A reader who wants the ninety-nine and a half has to accept the stake that comes with it, which on many machines means five dollars a hand rather than one (five coins at a dollar); that is the real reason the game is less popular than its arithmetic deserves!
What a reader can check, and in what order
Four steps, in this order. Open the "paytable" on the face of the machine before any money moves, find the full house and the flush, and read the two numbers that sit beside them. That is the whole of the first step; it takes ten seconds, and it settles more about the evening than any other ten seconds a player will spend in a lobby.
Then check what the maximum "stake" is and whether he intends to play it (the machine states it on the same face as the paytable), because the figure he has just read assumes it and collapses without it. Then, if the game is a "variant" rather than "Jacks or Better" (Deuces Wild, Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus and the rest), accept that the shorthand does not transfer: each variant has its own full-pay table and its own "strategy chart", which is why the shorthand of one game says nothing about another.
Last, and this is the part that belongs to our subject rather than to the game, check the currency the account is held in. A return of ninety-nine and a half per cent is the finest number on a casino floor, and an exchange spread of two and a half per cent each way on the money going in and coming out (five per cent, over a round trip) would take more from the player than the game itself does.
That last sentence is the argument of this entire site, and video poker is where it is sharpest: the best price in the building can be undone by the account it is settled through.
Quatro Casino
MGA · Kahnawake
Open Quatro CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Casino Action
MGA · Kahnawake
Open Casino ActionCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Grand Hotel Casino
MGA · Kahnawake
Open Grand Hotel CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Where our knowledge stops
We could not open the lobbies of the Games Global brands from outside Canada, because those sites refuse a foreign request with an HTTP "403", so nothing here says which paytables any particular casino in our index serves today. Nobody here has played a hand of video poker for money at any of them, and no account was opened to look.
Our asset register records the "platform" behind each lobby with the date of the reading, and nothing about individual machines; where it is silent, the card reads "not verified" rather than carrying a figure we assembled from a press page. The paytables change when an operator licenses a different "build", exactly as they do with slots.
What survives is the method, and it is unusually durable for this trade: in video poker the price is printed on the product, in two lines, and a reader who reads them is not taking anybody's word for anything.
Questions readers ask
What do the numbers in "9/6 Jacks or Better" mean?
They are the payouts for a full house and a flush, in that order, per coin staked at full stake. A machine paying nine and six returns about ninety-nine and a half per cent with correct play; the same game paying eight and five returns about ninety-seven, and the only visible difference between the two is those two "lines" of the "paytable".
Is video poker really better value than slots?
A full-pay machine played correctly is the best return on a casino floor, and both of those conditions do real work. The return assumes the player makes the mathematically correct discard on every hand, and a player who plays by instinct gives back a large part of the advantage he came for.
Does the machine deal fairly?
The deal is from a single simulated fifty-two card deck with no memory between hands, which is what makes the return computable in advance: every possible hand and every possible draw can be enumerated, which is precisely why the paytable determines the figure. That is the opposite of a slot, whose build nobody can see.
Where do I find the paytable?
On the face of the machine before any money moves, which is the whole practical point of this page. A lobby that hides the paytable behind a spin is a lobby to leave, because in this one game the paytable is not a detail about the product: it is the product.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
