Going From Beginner to Advanced in Jacks or Better Video Poker

When you start out playing video poker, most people tell you that you should learn Jacks or Better first because it’s the most basic style of the game available. This advice is right-on, and most players start out by looking at the basic strategies and ideas that help you to play right a lot of the time in this game. However, if you want to push forward and become a more advanced player, then you need to change how you approach the game. We’re going to teach you what kind of focus to use and how to systematically improve at Jacks or Better video poker.

The focus that you should have in Jacks or Better is on which discards you’re making. There are a number of different options in each hand for doing this, and while the vast majority of them are easy to dismiss as absurd, you’re often going to be left with at least two or three viable ways of playing difficult hands. Being able to figure out exactly which way is the best in these difficult situations is the key to becoming an advanced player in this game.

For example, if you have QQ634 with no flush draw, it’s very obvious that the correct play is to keep the QQ pair and discard the rest. Beginning players can make that play because it’s common sense. However, if you have AsQsJs4s4h, it’s not so clear how to play it. Most people will think it’s a choice between discarding the 4h for the flush draw or keeping the 44 pair and discarding the rest. What’s interesting is that both of these choices are incorrect, and the right choice is to discard both of the fours and draw to the three-card royal because of the chances of hitting high pairs and strong runner hands.

Most of the difficult decisions you’ll face are between made hands and draws. For example, if you have AhKhJhTh7h, you have to make a choice between keeping the made flush or going for the royal flush by discarding the seven of hearts. It’s always right to keep four cards to a royal over anything worse than a made straight flush, and learning figure out the relative value between draws and made hands is the key to being able to play these difficult scenarios correctly over and over again.