If you have been into a casino, chances are, you have seen or played with a video poker machine. For those who do not know what video poker is or for those who haven’t stepped inside a casino, video poker is one of those casino games that looks like and has a similar size like that of a slot machine. It is usually played on a computer console.

The earliest video poker machines were in the market in the mid 1970’s. It is basically a combination of a monitor that resembled that much of a television and a CPU or Central Processing Unit. In 1979, video poker came into the mainstream with the introduction of “Draw Poker”. Video Poker became popular in the 1980’s and up to now, different video poker machines are still being played in many casinos and gaming floors.

A game of video poker begins when a player inserts money or ticket into a video poker machine as a bet of one or more credits. After this, a “deal” button found in the machine should be pressed. This action draws the cards in the video poker machine. At this point, the player has an option to keep or exchange one or more cards for a new one from the deck of cards. After this, the video poker machine evaluates the hand. A pay schedule of winning hands is usually posted. If the hand matches one of those, then the video poker will offer a payout.

A pair of jacks is usually the minimum hand when a video poker machine starts the payout. The bases of payout allocations in pay schedules are the rareness of the hand and the overall speculated return offer of the game operator. Other players play more and bet more boldly for video poker machines that offer progressive jackpots for royal flush and other rare hands.

There are many kinds of video poker machines. Most of which that were created are variants of the original 5-card draw. These video poker games can be categorized into 2 kinds. These are the standard video poker and the multi-line video poker.

Standard video poker include Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, 10’s or Better, Aces & Faces, Joker Poker, Megajacks and 2 Ways Royal. These video poker games are usually characterized with the use of terms that have some adjective in the title such as “double”, or “triple” or “bonus”. Deuces Wild, which is the most popular among standard video poker machines, can be played where a two can substitute as a joker. In this video poker game a jackpot is paid as a natural royal or for four deuces.

Multi-play poker games, on the other hand, are video poker games where the player starts with a base hand of five cards. In this game, different set of cards with the base excluded from the set will be used to draw additional hands. Some of the multi-player video poker games offered include 4-Line Jacks or Better, 4-Line Deuces Wild, 4-Line Aces & Faces, 10-Line Jacks or Better and 25-Line Aces & Faces

The following are tips that can help you play and win in video poker games.

- For players who want to play progressive video poker, it is best to look for jackpots over 250 dollars on a nickel machine, 2,500 dollars on a quarter machine and 10,000 dollars on a dollar machine.

- you should play on a video poker machines that pay 6 coins for a flush and 9 coins for a full house

- Jacks should be reserved when playing video poker and you should remember that it is more valuable than the Ace.

- A strategy to get royal flush bonuses when playing video poker on progressive machines is to bet the maximum amount of coins.

- And lastly, like in all poker games, take your time. Study the hand dealt by the video poker machine before you act.

By: Nicholas Tan

As the research done many Americans love gambling and many things related to betting. And the sums of the gambling lovers are also always increasing day by day. It is because the pleasing entertainment that can be gotten from gambling games playing. People can get more entertainment than just enjoying the games playing but also the challenging to win or lose some money by the result of the game.

The modern technology development in the aspect of digital make it is easier to enjoy gambling nowadays. Everyone can enjoy gambling games anytime in the online casino. All they need before enjoy the gambling is just signing up and having some accounts; then they can play the gambling games and bet the accounts. There are many sites providing Online Casinos for USA Players and every Americans that have been adult and having enough accounts can visit the sites and play as much as they want.

Onlinecasinousa.net is the site that provides information about USA online casinos and reviews of them. You can visit this site first to know kinds of websites that can serve you satisfying online gambling. Don’t be worry about the legalization of online gambling for Americans; you can read about US gambling Law and know kinds of gambling that are permitted in USA.

To be successful at poker you should, at any time during the play of a hand, be able to calculate the odds of catching your hand to the odds the pot is giving you.

Knowing the probability of making a specific hand in poker can be done by calculating hand odds. Figuring out how many outs you have will give you the possibility of calculating the number of times you will hit your hand by the river.

Lets say your’e dealt A-9 of hearts in Texas Hold’em and the flop comes up showing two hearts. Your hand odds for hitting another heart by the river will be approximately 36% or 3 to 1. (you will hit your hand 1 out of 3 times)

You can figure this out by first finding the number of outs that you have. Outs are the number of cards remainig in the deck ( not visibe to you) that can help you make your hand.

So if we are using the hand above as an example and you hold A-9 of hearts and catch two hearts on the flop, than you have 9 more hearts in the deck that can help you complete your flush. 2 hearts in your hand + 2 hearts on the table minus 13 hearts in total = 9 outs.

If you multiply your number of outs by 4, than you will get an approximate percentage of hitting your hand by the river (9×4=36%).

Poker pot odds is the ratio between the size of the pot compared to how much it will cost you to call a bet from another player. The higher the ratio between the size of the pot and the cost of calling a bet, the better your poker pot odds are.

If there are $40 in the pot after the flop and a player bets $10 and two other players calls his bet then you are getting 7 to 1 in pot odds. If you are chasing the A-9 flush draw from the flop , than you are getting a 36% or 3 to 1 in hand odds to catch your card at the river, so calling or even raising this bet will be a correct decision to make.

By: Oddvar Pettersen