Pick your five dealt cards and get the mathematically optimal hold — the exact expected value of every option, computed from first principles. Then drill it in the trainer.
For your dealt hand, the analyzer considers all 32 ways to hold cards. For each one it computes the expected value — the average payout across every possible draw from the remaining 47 cards — and recommends the hold with the highest EV. There is no sampling or guesswork: it is an exact combinatorial calculation, the same math that makes perfect video poker strategy possible.
Scan this list from the top and play the first pattern your dealt hand matches — that is your optimal hold. It captures near-perfect strategy in one ordered list. For the exact best play on any specific hand (including the rare edge cases), use the analyzer above.
Chart order verified against our engine's exact per-hand EV. Deuces Wild uses a different chart — switch the pay table in the analyzer to drill it.
9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.54% (house edge 0.46%); NSU Deuces Wild returns 99.73%; and full-pay Deuces Wild actually returns 100.76% to a perfect player. Every figure is computed by our engine over all 2,598,960 deals. See the complete breakdown, pay tables and the math behind each number:
Video poker house edge & RTP by pay table →
| Hand | 9/6 JoB | 9/5 | 8/5 |
|---|
Payouts are per coin at max-coin play (royal flush pays 800-for-1). Returns assume perfect strategy. 9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.54% (house edge 0.46%) — verified by our engine over all 2,598,960 possible deals.
The "9/6" refers to the full-house and flush payouts (9-for-1 and 6-for-1). Every step down — 9/5, 8/5, 8/6 — quietly raises the house edge. Learning to spot the pay table before you play is the single biggest edge in video poker. This is educational content about probability, not gambling advice.