Video poker looks simple from the outside. You place a bet, receive five cards, decide what to keep, and draw replacements. Behind that straightforward loop sits a family of variants with genuinely different maths, and beginners who ignore those differences tend to lose value without noticing. This comparison sets the main UK-available variants side by side so you can choose a game that matches your bankroll and your appetite for risk. For more details, visit see offers.
Before comparing paytables, it helps to understand return to player. A Jacks or Better machine running at full pay returns 99.54% over the long term, while a poorly configured version of the same game can drop below 97%. That gap of more than 2.5 percentage points is larger than the house edge difference between many table games, which is why variant selection matters so much.
The Core Variants and Their Paytables
Jacks or Better is the natural starting point. It pays nothing below a pair of jacks, which forces you to chase strong hands rather than small consolation prizes. The 9/6 full-pay version, where a full house pays 9 and a flush pays 6, is the benchmark against which every other variant is measured.
Bonus Poker skews the paytable towards four of a kind. Standard quads pay 25 per coin, but four aces return 80 and four twos, threes or fours return 40. The trade-off is a reduced full house and flush payout, dropping the overall return to around 99.17% on the 8/5 configuration. Beginners often enjoy the bigger four-of-a-kind payouts, though the strategy adjustments are modest.
Double Bonus pushes further in the same direction. Four aces pay 160 per coin, but flushes fall to 5 and the return on the 10/7 version sits at 100.17%. That figure exceeds 100%, but only with perfect play, and the variance is noticeably higher. Double Double Bonus goes further still, adding kicker bonuses where specific fifth cards multiply four-of-a-kind payouts, reaching returns near 100.19% on the best paytables.
Deuces Wild replaces jacks with twos as the wild card and removes the jack-or-better threshold entirely. Every pair pays something, which keeps sessions alive but demands a very different strategy. Full-pay Deuces Wild, with a 25/15/9/4/4/3/2/1 structure, returns 100.76%, making it the highest-returning common variant when configured correctly.
Comparing Returns, Variance and Strategy Load
The table below summarises the headline figures for a beginner audience. All percentages assume optimal play on the best widely available paytable.
| Variant | Return to Player | Variance | Strategy Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jacks or Better (9/6) | 99.54% | Low | Easy |
| Bonus Poker (8/5) | 99.17% | Low-medium | Easy |
| Double Bonus (10/7) | 100.17% | Medium-high | Moderate |
| Double Double Bonus | 100.19% | High | Moderate |
| Deuces Wild (full pay) | 100.76% | High | Hard |
Variance deserves close attention. Jacks or Better produces frequent small wins, so a £100 bankroll on 25p hands can last many hours. Double Double Bonus can swallow the same bankroll in twenty minutes of cold streaks before returning anything meaningful. Beginners should treat variance as the real cost of chasing those 160-coin aces.
Strategy load is the other hidden factor. Jacks or Better requires memorising around 30 core rules. Deuces Wild demands closer to 50, with wild-card combinations that trip up even experienced players. If you want to play accurately from day one, start with Jacks or Better and graduate once the fundamentals feel automatic.
Practical Advice for Choosing Your First Machine
Check the paytable before inserting a single penny. A 9/6 Jacks or Better machine is worth playing; a 6/5 version of the same game returns just 95.44% and should be avoided. Paytable inspection takes ten seconds and is the single most valuable habit a beginner can build.
Set a session bankroll of at least 200 hands’ worth of stakes and stick to one variant until you know its strategy chart. Splitting attention across four games slows your learning and increases error rates. For further detail on returns and responsible play, the Gambling Commission publishes guidance at gamblingcommission.gov.uk.
Finally, remember that every figure quoted assumes perfect play. A beginner making occasional errors on Jacks or Better might achieve 99%, still respectable, whereas sloppy Deuces Wild play can fall below 97%. Choose the variant that rewards the skill level you actually have, then improve from there.
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