How To Beat Online Poker
Video poker is one of the most popular games in the casino. Like slot machines, video poker games move fast and use sound effects and flashing lights to attract attention, but unlike traditional slot machines, these poker style games require players to make decisions that affect the outcome.
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The fact that players can make good and bad decisions that alter their chance of winning means some video poker titles have among the best odds in the casino. Depending on what machine you choose and how you play, the house edge can be as low as 0.5%. Video poker is a skill game that provides the thrill of slot machine with the option of using strategy to improve your chances of winning.
How to Beat Video Poker Game Variations
So many versions of this game exist, it would take several thousand words just to list the titles and game choices. One thing most variants have in common is that they’re based on basic five-card draw poker, with some exceptions.
A generic game looks something like this: the machine deals you five random cards out of a computer-simulated deck of 52 (more if the game you’re playing incorporates Joker cards), and you’re then given the option of improving your hand by choosing which cards to hold on to and which to exchange for new cards. If you choose to get rid of some of your cards, the game’s computer will randomly select new ones to replace your discards. The idea is to form a better hand than you’re dealt by holding onto your best cards and hoping to draw new ones that improve your winnings.
Video Poker vs. Traditional Poker
How To Beat Poker Machines
Besides the basic mechanics of five-card draw, or a few other poker variants that some video games use as their basis, the two games have little to do with one another. Understanding the ranking of poker hands is important for both games, but traditional poker skills won’t be of much use to the video player.
The biggest difference between video and standard poker is that the video game is man versus machine, while standard poker pits each player against one another. A video machine player doesn’t have to worry about beating anyone else; only creating a hand that leads to a payout as described by the machine’s pay table. Holding two pair while playing a poker machine means you win, while a two-pair hand in a standard card game could be easily beaten by any player with a stronger hand.
Video Poker Machine Strategy
Because so much variety exists in the world of video poker, teaching you how to win at video poker would require lessons for each style of game that exists. Instead, memorize these three tips to performing well on any given video card gaming title:
1. Understand the ideal strategy for whatever type of poker machine you’re playing.
2. Read a machine’s pay table and understand how to compare pay tables for different machines.
3. Gain an understanding of the volatility and hit frequency of different video titles.
You won’t learn these three factors overnight, and no strategy guide exists that can hand you a winning method for video poker without doing the homework and losing a little bit of cash along the way. Learning to read pay tables is simple: the trick is to play machines that offer the best payouts for the hands that you’ll see most often.
Strategy guides often emphasize the important of what are called 9/6 Jacks or Better games. These numbers refer to the winnings paid out for a full house and a flush: 9 credits for a full house and 6 credits for a flush. A casino that offers 8/5 instead of 9/6 is giving you a payback percentage of 97.3%, while 9/6 machine offer 99.54% payback. That tiny difference in the pay table affects your potential winnings drastically. So always look for machines with ideal pay tables; specifically, those that pay 9 credits for a full house and 6 for a flush.
The two most popular video poker games are Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild, and players who learn just the basics of advanced poker strategy stand to earn much more money for their gaming time.
As for volatility, learning to pick out a volatile poker video game requires experience and knowledge. Volatility refers to the ups and downs of a given video title, the variance between your wins and losses. Pay tables that offer the biggest returns also happen to be those with the most volatility, meaning your bankroll will shrink faster as you chase the higher payouts.
Strategy Tips for the Most Popular Poker Video Titles
In most casinos or gambling websites, the two most popular games of video poker are Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild. Here are basic strategy tips for Jacks or Better, the most common and most popular video poker machine in today’s market.
How to Win at Jacks or Better
Avoid falling for the common mistake of keeping what is called a “kicker,” a high card matched with a pair. People think that this kicker will make it more likely for them to form a hand with a higher payout, but this isn’t true.
Never hold on to three cards to chase a straight or a flush. The only time you should keep three cards to go after a big payout is if you are capable of pulling off the much more valuable straight flush. Statistically speaking, holding three cards to grab a straight or a flush is a losing proposition.
If you feel tempted to chase a big winning hand such as a four of a kind ,but you’d have to break up an existing full house or two-pair hand to get there, remember this basic video poker strategy—let the machine deal you a winning hand. Don’t give up a winning hand in an attempt to get an even bigger winning hand.
Small stakes online poker tournaments are fantastic fun. They can be frustrating at times — I’ll give you that — but for the most part, it is difficult not to enjoy yourself while competing in one.
They are also potentially lucrative beasts, not least because they tend to attract players in droves. On some sites — in particular PokerStars — tournaments with buy-ins as small as $1-$10 may see several thousand hopefuls take to the virtual felt in the hope of turning their tiny investments into much more meaningful sums.
As you can imagine, the majority of these huge fields are populated with recreational players and therefore the standard of play is, as a rule, very poor. That’s not to say navigating your way through the crowds and winning one of these things is an easy task, because it isn’t. In other words, don’t think you’re going to deposit $200 online, play a bunch of these tournaments, and suddenly be rolling in cash like Scrooge McDuck in Ducktails. It’s not going to happen.
What is going to happen, or what should happen, is that you continue reading this article — and others you find in the Strategy section — and once you’ve armed yourself with the weapons of knowledge, you go out there and apply that learning to do more than just enjoy these tournaments, but to profit from them as well.
Here are five tips designed to help you both prepare for and find success in small stakes online tourneys.
1. Be Prepared For a Long Session
Most of these low buy-in, big field tournaments take several hours to complete, so you need to be prepared to play for a long time. Be patient as always, but also be ready for a lengthy grind should you go deep in the event.
I’ve been fortunate enough to chop the $3.30 rebuy on PokerStars twice. On both occasions the tournament started at around 7:00 p.m and we finished at 6:30 a.m. This is all well and good if you are a poker pro who can sleep the next day, but you have to take into consideration work commitments if you have a job. Know what you’re potentially getting yourself into when registering for these events.
That said, the tournaments available at WSOP Social Poker do not take hours to complete, making them great to play when you have a little spare time from the daily grind.
2. Be Prepared For Some Crazy Swings
The variance in small stakes poker tournaments is huge because of the sheer number of opponents you have to get through and the fact many of these opponents can be nearly impossible to put on a hand. Also of significance when playing against a large field full of recreational players is the possibility of players calling your raises — even your all-in ones — with some ridiculous holdings, adding further to the unpredictability of outcomes.
While this situation is very favorable in the long run, over the short term you can often find yourself running worse than you ever thought possible. Make sure therefore you have an ample bankroll to fall back on when times are hard — something in the range of 200-300 times of your average buy-in (I’d recommend).
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Play Now3. Keep it Simple and Value Bet Your Hands to the Max
DO NOT try to run an elaborate bluff at any stage of the tournament because it will only lead to tears of sorrow. A lot of your opponents only care what cards they have in their hand and won’t realize from your actions that you’re representing a specific hand — they just want to get to showdown and hopefully win.
More often than not in these events you will want to keep matters simple, playing “ABC poker” and letting the cards fall how they will.
Along the same lines, make sure you get the maximum value from your made hands. Higher-stakes tournament grinders may routinely fire 1/3 pot-sized bets at their opponents, but that’s because it is more difficult to get paid off at those stakes. At the lower end of the spectrum, you can get away with betting more. Because so many of your opponents will love to call your bets, you may as well take advantage with your strong holdings.
4. Listen to the Betting / Prepare to Lay Down Some Big Hands
How often have you heard poker players bemoan their luck and come out with some rubbish such as “I can’t beat these donkeys, they always hit the nuts on the river.” What they don’t tell you is that “these donkeys” often play their hands in a manner that allows you to get away from pots should you need to.
For example, if a weak player has limp-called preflop, called the flop, called on the turn, and then leads into you on the river when the flush comes in, guess what? That player almost certainly has the flush. The same is often true for raises on the river. Even if the only hand that beats you is , if an obviously weak player raises you on the river, you have to consider that he or she probably has !
5. Don’t Worry About Playing a “Balanced Style”
If someone tells you that you have to play a “balanced style” of poker inlarge-field small stakes poker tournaments, laugh and walk away. While you have to do this higher up the poker food chain, you are highly unlikely to come up against the same players ever again in a field of 3,000-10,000 foes, so you can be as unbalanced as you wish.
That means not worrying so much about not revealing certain patterns with your play, such as always betting big with strong hands. While against stronger opponents you should balance your play by varying your bets and actions so as not to be read so easily, against large fields of less skilled opponents this isn’t as great of a concern.
Obviously, the five tips above are not all you need to be successful in small stakes online tourneys, but they should at least help you in your quest to turn a little into a lot!
This article was originally published on Feb. 14, 2017. Last update: Jun. 18, 2019.
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