Video Poker is a decendant of Poker, only it is played on a machine, and only one person plays at a time.

Game Play:
The game starts when you place a bet, usually between one and five coins or tokens, inclusive. The value of the coins may vary, there are nickle, quarter, fifty cent, dollar and five and ten dollar machines. So you may be betting anywhere from $0.05 to $50.00 per game. Of course the payout is more, the more coins you put in. Once you have placed your bet you usually need to hit some sort of 'deal' button, this will instruct the machine to give you five cards. You then decide which cards you would like to keep, or 'hold', and then hit the deal button again. At this point the machine gets rid of the cards you didn't want, and replaces them with new cards. If you have a winning hand, you are paid, according the poker hand you have.

Sample Payout Charts:

Standard Video Poker

  Royal Flush         400 x number of coins
  Straight Flush      50 x number of coins
  4 of a Kind         25 x number of coins
  Full House          8 x number of coins
  Flush               5 x number of coins
  Straight            4 x number of coins
  3 of a Kind         3 x number of coins
  2 Pair              2 x number of coins
  Jacks or Better     1 x number of coins

Deuces Wild

  Royal Flush         400 x number of coins
  4 Dueces            200 x number of coins
  Royal Flush w/2's   25 x number of coins
  5 of a Kind         16 x number of coins
  Straight Flush      10 x number of coins
  4 of a Kind         4 x number of coins
  Full House          4 x number of coins
  Flush               3 x number of coins
  Straight            2 x number of coins
  3 of a Kind         1 x number of coins

As with other forms of casino gambling, the word on video poker is don't play. The vast majority of the machines have a payoff of less than 100% which means that in the long run you must lose. A few rare machines, such as the All American game (with payoffs of 800, 200, 40, 8, 8, 8, 3, 1, and 1 for the above categories), have slightly positive payoffs (in that case, 100.72%). Most, like the most common Jacks or Better game (with payoffs of 800, 50, 25, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1), are not (in this case 99.54%).

Even if you do play a machine with greater than 100% payoffs, the practical difference of 1% in payoffs is virtually nothing. Video poker is highly variable; and your winnings or losses will swing wildly as you keep losing and then suddenly win a sizable amount. Of course, the losing streaks will make you desperate to win more, and the wins will encourage you to play more, either way. But to keep that .72% advantage, you must play perfectly. The combinatorial and probabalistic complexity of video poker is enormous. There are 2,598,960 possible hands and 32 possible plays on each one. It takes dedicated study and practice to get your strategy down close enough to perfection to maintain an edge over the machine. Even once you've done that, it is impossible to play fast enough to make a lot more than the minimum wage with odds so close to even. Additionally, changes in the payoff table change the optimal strategy completely. If you go from one kind of machine to another without adjusting your strategy, you will lose big time.

So the moral is that it really doesn't matter whether you are playing blackjack, video poker, slot machines, or roulette. You will almost certainly lose money, and the effort it takes to be assured long term profits would be much better spent earning money honestly. If you play at all, expect to lose every dollar you bet. Generally, there are much more entertaining ways to spend money than gambling.

All that said, I find the theory of video poker and other games of chance and skill very fascinating.