Playing Discards Well in Deuces Wild Video Poker

Deuces Wild Video Poker is one of the most difficult skill-based games to learn out of all of the games that are available for playing in online casinos. If you want to become skilled at this game, you have to put in a lot of practice and study working on how to best play your discards. There are tons of situations to learn, and we want to give you some general guidelines that will help you to make the right play more often than not. We want to look specifically at situations where you have one or zero wilds since those are the most common scenarios.

Let’s start with no wilds. If you’re familiar with Jacks or Better, then you’ll find that play is similar with a few key differences. First off, there are no payouts for single pair hands. To this end, you’ll find that three cards to a royal flush are better than a single pair in this scenario, but a single pair is always better than four cards to a flush or straight. When it comes to hands without pairs or draws, you’ll want to try to keep two cards to a royal flush if at all possible. If this isn’t possible, then don’t worry about keeping a single high card since it won’t help you that much: Just discard all five and hope for the best.

With a single wild card, things can get a little tricky because of the straight-flush draws that can come up. There are two main types of straight-flush draws when you have a single wild. If you have four to a straight-flush so that the non-wild cards are all consecutive, then we’ll call this a major straight-flush draw. All other four-card straight-flush draws (including the wild) will be called minor straight-flush draws.

So in Deuces Wild with a single deuce in your hand, four to a royal flush is better than any hand that’s lower than a pat straight-flush. However, a major straight-flush draw is better than anything lower than a full house, so it’s an exceptionally strong hand in this game. Straights and flushes are worse than major straight-flush draws, but they are better than the minor ones, and this is why it’s so important to note the difference. If you can’t make at least three to a royal, then you should discard your four non-wilds.