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Video poker first became commercially viable when it became 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 primitive by today's standards.
Video poker became more firmly established when SIRCOMA, which stood
for Si Redd's Coin Machines, and which evolved over time to become
International Game Technology, introduced Draw Poker in 1979.
Throughout the 1980s, video poker became increasingly popular in
casinos, as people found the devices less intimidating than playing
table games. Today video poker enjoys a prominent place on the gaming
floors of many casinos. The game is especially popular with Las Vegas
locals, who tend to patronize locals casinos off the Las Vegas Strip.
These local casinos often offer lower denomination machines or better
odds, although this was more common in the 1990s as casinos across the
country have recently been cutting their paytables and/or only
offering 25 cent machines or higher.
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 the draw, 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 tables 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 jackpots 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.
Kinds of video poker
Newer video Poker machines may employ variants of the basic five-card
draw. Typical variations include Deuces Wild, where a two serves as a
wild card 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 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.
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