Ten of the sixteen most popular online gambling software vendors deal Tens or Better Online Video Poker. The house percentage on these games ranges from a worse of 3.74% at Parlay Entertainment sites to a best of 0.87% at Microgaming, Rival, Vegas Tech, Grand Virtual, Boss, and Playsafe sites. (I prefer Rival online casinos over the others, because it also offers the best odds on other varieties of video poker.)
Play Tens or Better at these top-rated Rival gaming sites.
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| It’s time for the 2010 4th of July Contest featuring Triple Play Draw Poker.
This game classic lets you choose which cards to hold after the initial 5 card deal, and those cards are automatically held in all three hands, giving you 3 opportunities to win! The Grand Prize winner will receive the following:
This month our Bonus Award is called “USAces”. We’re giving away 3 months of GOLD membership to the top five players with the most aces in a 200 deal session. For more information about contest rules and prizes, This should be a fun contest. To start playing, visit the VideoPoker.com home page. |
Joker Poker online video poker is video poker played with a standard 52-card deck plus a Joker. The minimum paying hand is a pair of Kings or Better, as opposed to a pair of Jacks or Better that is most often the minimum paying hand for video poker games without a Joker. What makes Joker Poker so appealing is that paytables do exist that offer an advantage to the player — if played optimally, of course.
While there is no Joker Poker offered online that has a player edge (also referred to as a +EV, for “positive expected value”), Bodog.com online casino comes close at 99.97%.
For a complete analysis of all forms of online video poker, see my online video poker page.
Deuces Wild (DW) online video poker is an exciting variant of video poker in which 2s are wild. Your bankroll will experience a lot of ups and downs relative to other forms of video poker because your return is based more on higher paying hands than in, for example, plain old generic Jacks or Better.
Optimal play in Deuces Wild will often dictate that you throw away all 5 dealt cards, so be prepared to simply “try again” on a fair number of hands in order to try for the all-power wild cards. For example, when dealt a hand that excludes 2s, a pair, a four-flush
The vast majority of online gambling sites offer Deuces Wild video poker, but not all of them offer a decent payout to players. Grand Virtual offers the best return to players at a whopping 99.72%, but not all players from all regions are accepted at Grand Virtual online casinos; for example, U.S. players are excluded, as are players from other countries. The next-best choices are the Rival Gaming online casinos, offering a 99.37% return. The download version of the BetUS.com Casino is a Rival Gaming casino, and BetUS.com Casino (unlike other Rival Gaming casinos) accepts players from all 50 US states.
For a complete analysis of all forms of online video poker, see my online video poker page.
Jacks or Better (JoB) video poker is the game that started the video poker craze. Every online gambling software vendor that deals any form of video poker deals Jacks or Better. The best odds on JoB are found at what is called a “9/6” machine — 9 for a Full House, 6 for a Flush — and has a 0.46% house edge at optimal play. Compare this to “8/6”, “8/5”, and even “6/5” machines that offer increasingly worse odds for the player.
Online “9/6” Jacks or Better is easy to find, so where you decide to play is mainly about customer service, bonuses, and speed of payout. The top-rated site that offers “9/6” Jacks or Better and that accepts players from most regions in the world — including all US states — is the download version of BetUs.com Casino. Another good choice is BoDog, where you can practice for free without having to download or register.
For a complete analysis of all forms of online video poker, see my online video poker page.
Four online casino software providers deal Double Double Bonus Jacks or Better online video poker: Microgaming Casino (MGS), Realtime Gaming (RTG), Grand Virtual (GV), and Bodog Casino (Bodog). Here are the paytables and house edge offered by each.
| Paytables for Double Double Bonus video poker by software vendor | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MGS | RTG | GV | Bodog | |
| Royal Flush | 4000 | 4000 | 4000 | 4000 |
| Straight Flush | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 |
| 4 of a Kind – Aces | 800 | 800 | 800 | 800 |
| 4 of a Kind – Aces w/any 2, 3, 4 | 2000 | 1750 | 2000 | 2000 |
| 4 of a Kind – 2s, 3s, 4s | 400 | 400 | 400 | 400 |
| 4 of a Kind – 2s, 3s, 4s w/any A, 2, 3, 4 | 800 | 800 | 800 | 800 |
| 4 of a Kind – All others | 250 | 225 | 250 | 250 |
| Full House | 45 | 45 | 40 | 45 |
| Flush | 30 | 30 | 35 | 30 |
| Straight | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| 3 of a Kind | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| 2 Pair | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Jacks or Better | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| House Edge (%) | 1.02 | 2.15 | 0.76 | 1.02 |
Unfortunately, Grand Virtual online casinos do not accept US-based real money players. And Microgaming has stopped accepted new US-based real money players (although players that had an account prior to approximately October 2006 can still play). The best option for US-based real-money players that want the best return on this variety of video poker should go with Bodog. All players are welcome to practice for free with no download and no registration needed.
I recently completed an analysis of 14 popular varieties of online video poker, inlcuding Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Joker Poker, and more. The analysis covers over 200 online gambling sites that run 16 popular versions of online gambling software from vendors like Microgaming, Realtime Gaming, Rival, Bodog, and others.
I’ve published the paytables and house edge (calculated using this excellent analyzer at Wizard of Odds) for each variety of online video poker. You can use this information to determine the best online gambling site to play your favorite variety of online video poker.Some interesting tidbits that I discovered in conducting this analysis:
