Play Video Poker Online: Our Top Choices Revealed
Online Video poker is one of the most popular ways to gamble around the world. Playing poker online combines elements of the traditional poker game with slot-style video gaming. You can even find online poker games in places outside casinos: gas stations, bars, airports, and racinos throughout America. Playing poker online is no different than land-based draw poker because both versions use RNGs and computer graphics.
If you want to succeed at online poker, real money players have to learn basic strategy in their chosen video poker variant. Like the name implies, video poker is played on a video screen with like modern slots, but the game is based on five-card draw poker. Just like their slot machine counterparts, poker machines have the same flashing lights, animations, and even 3D graphics and bonus games.
Top Online Video Poker Casinos
Ranking | Casino Name | Bonus Amount | Review | Payment Options | Minimum Deposit | Actions |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4 | USD $3,750 Bonus |
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$20 Min Deposit | PLAY NOW | ||
5 | $2,800 Slots + Cards welcome Bonus Bonus |
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$10 Min Deposit | PLAY NOW |
The Basics of Online Video Poker
Most video poker titles in modern online casinos use a touchscreen interface, while older video poker machines rely on physical buttons for interaction. In video poker, you place a bet and are dealt five cards. The game follows the traditional poker hand hierarchy, featuring hands like a pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and the top hand—a royal flush.
Video poker machines often have relatively low betting limits, similar to slot machines. Bet sizes typically range from nickel and quarter bets to multi-hand high roller machines that can reach hundreds of dollars per round, though most machines fall between a quarter and a few dollars per hand.
During gameplay, you can choose to discard or not discard from your hand to build a better hand. Video poker machines vary, so the winning combinations and payouts for each machine might be different. That information is displayed on a paytable on the machine’s face.
Online Video Poker Strategy
Video poker games offer casino gamblers some of the best odds on the casino floor. Some video poker games, if you play them according to perfect strategy, are actually positive expectation games. In other words, over time, the house can expect to lose money instead of the gambler.
Find the right paytable on the right machine and you’ll find the odds tipped slightly in your favor. If you know what video poker machines to play, and you manage to earn some free drinks or free food along the way, you’ll find yourself squarely in the black at the end of a gaming session. Becoming a member of the slots club and getting a percentage of your playback is an important part of getting a positive expectation deal.
Today’s video poker games have better odds than slot machines, but offer the same convenience. If you like to sit at a slot machine, zone out, drink a couple of beers, and play a game that doesn’t involve much brain power, video poker gives you a better chance of winning money than slot machines. The only problem is you’ll need to learn video poker strategy for the most fun and excitement.
Online Video Poker Pay Tables
Although all online poker sites offer games like Jacks or Better and Joker Poker (Joker’s Wild), the paytables for these games can vary significantly. Keep the following factors in mind when choosing an online video poker game:
- The games at Roaring 21, and Sloto Cash offer a 250x payout for a royal flush instead of a 800x payout. 250x is the payout for a 4-coin jackpot at most Las Vegas Strip video poker machines, so this adds 1% or more to the house edge of the game.
- Some games, like Bonus Poker Deluxe, trade this disadvantage for the advantage of 75x payouts on a straight flush (instead of 50x payouts in many games). It’s not all to a player’s disadvantage.
- When you read online about the great odds video poker offers, these articles refer to full-pay video poker machines that are found in Las Vegas casinos.
- Responsible video poker experts post multiple paytables, but even the experts can’t cover every single version of a game.
- Long story short: an online video poker house edge might not be the same as what you’ve read about.
- In our experience, the video poker paytables at Bovada, and Ignition are closer to what you’ll find in Las Vegas casinos than the other gaming sites on the list.
The table below points the way to the best RTPs for each video poker variant at online casinos in the United States we recommend.
Video Poker Odds
Video Poker Game | Return-to-Player (RTP) | Which US Online Casino Features This Version? |
Jacks or Better |
97.30% | Bovada, Ignition |
Joker Poker |
98.41% | Bovada, Ignition |
Bonus Deuces Wild |
99.45% | Bovada, Ignition |
Double Double Bonus Poker |
98.98% | Bovada, Ignition |
Sevens Wild |
Less than 98.10% | Sloto Cash |
Aces and Eights |
Less than 97.00% | Sloto Cash |
All American Poker |
Less Than 97.48% | Sloto Cash |
Bonus Poker |
Less than 98.17% | Roaring 21, Sloto Cash |
Bonus Poker Deluxe |
98.46% | Roaring 21, Sloto Cash |
Online Video Poker Tips
Because all machines are different, it is hard to give tips on each kind of video poker available. Instead, here are three rules that can be applied as general video poker tips across all machines.
1. Play free video poker online.
Free video poker games are common online. Most provide the option to play real money video poker. This helps you learn the rules of different video poker titles without risking real money. Don’t go into a casino and play video poker without any experience. Free video poker games are everywhere, so try your hand before you sit in front of the real deal.
2. Study a machine’s payout table.
If you don’t know what a video poker machine will pay for different hands, you don’t know whether or not it’s a good or bad video poker game. One rule of thumb, the more wild cards there are in a video poker title, the harder it is to get to the better casino payouts. You learn things like that by studying payout tables. The video poker games that offer you the best odds have no wild cards at all, and offer payouts starting at just a pair of Jacks or better. Some Deuces Wild games offer positive expectation if played with perfect strategy thanks to the payout table structure. As a counter-example, the popular Joker’s Wild video poker games has the lowest payout on two pair or better, so it is harder to win on Joker’s Wild than a wild card-less video poker game.
3. Bet maximum.
Everyone’s video poker strategy is a little different, but most video poker players agree that maximum bets are always the best play.
There’s an entire type of online video poker real money machines, called a progressive video poker machine, that only pays out the highest jackpots to maximum bets. These machines have different schedules for maximum bets than lower bets, so you’d want to bet the highest amount possible when playing those machines. The trick is knowing how to read a payout schedule and figure out if it is worthwhile to bet max, or if you can save a little of your bankroll with smaller bets.
Now that you know the basics of video poker, follow these three simple tips and you should be able to have some good cheap entertainment at your local video poker game. Look for the best payout schedules and remember that video poker offers some of the better odds of any game on the casino floor.
4. Play Online Video Poker Wisely
Keeping in mind what we said about online video poker paytables in the table above, choose your online casino for video poker wisely. The list of recommended video poker casinos below places the sites with the most video poker games at the top of the list. At present, the video poker games with the best odds are at the sites towards the bottom of the list.
Our Recommended US Online Video Poker Casinos
Casino | Welcome Bonus | # of Video Poker Games |
Roaring 21 Casino |
$10,000 Bonus | 52 Video Poker Games (1-Hand, 3-Hand, 10-Hand, 52-Hand) |
Casino Max |
$9000 Bonus | 52 Video Poker Games (1-Hand, 3-Hand, 10-Hand, 52-Hand) |
Sloto Cash |
$7777 Bonus | 52 Video Poker Games (1-Hand, 3-Hand, 10-Hand, 52-Hand) |
BoVegas |
$6000 Bonus | 16 Video Poker Games |
Slots.lv |
$5000 Bonus | 8 Games, including Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, Bonus Deuces Wild, Double Double Bonus Poker |
Bovada |
$3000 Bonus | 8 Games, including Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, Bonus Deuces Wild, Double Double Bonus Poker |
Ignition Casino |
$3000 Bonus | 8 Games, including Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, Bonus Deuces Wild, Double Double Bonus Poker |
Cafe Casino |
$1500 Bonus | 8 Games, including Jacks or Better, Joker Poker, Bonus Deuces Wild, Double Double Bonus Poker |
Golden Lion |
$3000 Bonus | 7 Video Poker Games (Rival Gaming) |
Video Poker Online FAQ
Free video poker games work just like online video poker for real money, except players are gambling with a fake bankroll. Just like real money games, free video poker uses a random number generator to determine the cards a user is dealt. In most cases, you don’t even need a casino account to play free games.
A full list of video poker online tips can be found here. But below is a summary of the best tips from our casino experts:
- Always Bet Maximum Coins
- Sign up fo the Player’s Club
- Use a Strategy Card
- Play Full Pay Deuces Wild or Jacks or Better
- Slow Down
That question has no simple answer. Different video poker variants have different odds. With a video poker variant (Jacks or Better, for example), the odds change based on the payout table. In the table above (“Video Poker Odds at US Online Casinos“), we posted the best odds at the US online casinos we recommend.
You’ll read online strategy articles that tell you about the great video poker odds, but when you get to a site, the paytable often doesn’t reflect what you read in the article. Study the table above closely for a more detailed analysis of the actual odds in online video poker.
Online video poker is legal at all of the real money casino sites we recommend. In most regions, the law states that online casino games for real money are illegal for individuals to operate but they will not face any prosecution for playing real money online casino games.
We recommend sites like Bovada, and Ignition Casino. While other US online casinos have more video poker variants, once our reviewers started looking at those sites’ paytables, we found they offered inferior versions of those games.
At the four sites we just listed, the version of Bonus Deuces Wild is much closer to the great odds you’d find at a land-based Las Vegas casino. Look at the table above (“Video Poker Odds at US Online Casinos“) for the full analysis.