 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 ] Next Last |
Video poker first became commercially viable once it was economical to combine a television-like monitor with a solid state central processing unit. The earliest models appeared at the same time as the first personal computers were produced, in the mid-1970s, although they were rather primitive by today's standards.
Video poker became more firmly established when IGT (now a market-leading provider of gaming devices) brought out Draw Poker in 1979.
Thoughout the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular with locals and tourists alike, who found the devices less intimidating than playing at the tables.
Today, video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming floors of many casinos, and the game is especially popular with Las Vegas locals, who tend to patronize off-Strip properties for the better odds offered by those establishments.
Game play begins by placing a bet of one or more credits, by inserting money (or in newer machines, a barcoded paper ticket with credit) into the machine, and then pressing a "Deal" button to draw cards. The player is then given an opportunity to keep or discard one or more of the cards in exchange for a new card drawn from the same virtual deck, after which the machine evaluates the hand and offers a payout if the hand matches one of the winning hands in the posted pay schedule.
On a typical video poker machine, payouts start with a minimum hand of a pair of jacks. Pay schedules allocate the payout for hands based partially upon how rare they are, and also based upon the total theoretical return the game operator chooses to offer.
Some machines offer progressive jackpot s for the royal flush, (and sometimes for other rare hands as well), thereby spurring players to both play more coins and to play more frequently.
Video poker machines operated in state-regulated jurisdictions are programmed to deal random card sequences. A series of cards is generated for each play; five dealt straight to the hand, the other five dealt in order if requested by player. This is due to a Nevada regulation, adopted by every other state with a gaming authority, that if dice or cards are used for an electronic game, the electronic versions must be as random as the real thing, within computational limits set by certain tests that are performed by gaming authority agents. It is unclear whether all video poker machines at Indian gaming establishments are subject to the same Nevada-style regulations, as Indian casinos are located on property that is sovereign to the tribe which holds the gaming license.
Newer video poker machines may employ variants of the basic five-card draw. Typical variations include: Deuces Wild, where a two can serve as a joker and a jackpot is paid for four deuces or a natural royal; pay schedule modification, where four aces with a five or smaller kicker pays an enhanced amount (these games usually have some adjective in the title such as "bonus", "double", or "triple"); and multi-play poker, where the player starts with a base hand of five cards, and each additional played hand draws from a different set of cards with the base hand removed. (Multi-play games are offered in "Triple Play", "Five Play", "Ten Play", "Fifty Play" and even "One Hundred Play" versions.)
In the non-wild games (games which do not have a wild card) a player who plays five or six hundred hands per an hour, on average, may receive the rare four-of-a-kind approximately once per hour, while a player may play for many days or weeks before receiving an extremely rare royal flush.
When certain pay schedules are offered by a video poker machine, players using perfect or near perfect strategy can obtain greater than 100% payback over a sufficiently long period of play. These machines are referred to as "full pay" machines. Casinos place full pay machines alongside other machines with pay schedules that offer a negative return, so it is up to the player to properly identify which video poker machines offer the full pay schedules.
Most full pay machines are configured with a pay schedule that is only full pay when the maximum amount of credits is bet. (See the pay schedule tables later in this article for details.)
One variation of video poker, called "Deuces Wild", can be found with pay schedules that offer up to a theoretical return of 100.762%, when played with perfect strategy. It is also available with other pay schedules that have lesser theoretical returns:
| Hand | 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | 4 credits | 5 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural Royal Flush | 300 | 600 | 900 | 1200 | 4000* |
| Four Deuces | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 1000 |
| Wild Royal Flush | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Five of a Kind | 15 | 30 | 45 | 60 | 75 |
| Straight Flush | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Four of a Kind | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Full House | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Flush | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Straight | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Three of a Kind | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Theoretical Return | 99.679% | 99.679% | 99.679% | 99.679% | 100.762%* |
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|