No heuristic video poker strategy is going to be 100% accurate. There are thousands of unique cases to consider and reducing them to a set of a few dozen rules cuts some corners. For example, Bob Dancer’s rules will get 95.3% payback on a game that can pay back 97.3% when played optimally (Rainman with a computer in his back pocket). It’s a question of how hard you want to work for that 2%.

Some of the earliest video poker games paid back more that 100% if played optimally. At the time, manufacturers didn’t have the computational horsepower to evaluate the full field of possibilities, so they made some educated guesses. Those machines are very hard to find – I don’t know of any still operational in Nevada.

Some jurisdictions require that the video poker machine show you the correct cards to hold. Surprisingly, they are less popular, because players either want to think for themselves, don’t trust the machines or go with whatever feels lucky.

Thank you for paying the Nevada income tax.