Video poker holds a very special place at the casino. If you play an optimal strategy, or even a near-optimal strategy, you can narrow the house edge down to a fraction – or even tilt the edge in your favor, when you find a progressive jackpot that has grown large enough. It does take a little bit of study, though. In order to figure out the right strategy for any video poker game, you have to look at the paytables and understand what they’re saying. The paytable on a video poker machine is the list of all the different prizes you can win, depending on what hand you make and how many coins you bet. For example, if you play Deuces Wild at Ignition Casino, you’ll see the paytable displayed prominently at the top of the screen. Each winning hand is there, from 3 of a Kind all the way to Royal Flush, and payouts are listed from one coin to the maximum five coins. These numbers are the key to figuring out what video poker strategy to play. Risks and Rewards in Video Poker Jacks or Better Multi-hand Video Poker, like any game at the casino, is about the probabilities of risk and reward. The rules of the game (number of decks, minimum winning hand, Wild cards, etc.) determine the probability of making a hand. The number of coins you bet determines the risk. Once you know the paytable for a game, you know the reward. The rest is