Live Draw Poker Game

Draw Poker vs. Video Poker

Other than the fact that it is played on a machine, video poker appears at first glance to be nearly identical to a live draw poker game-you are dealt five cards, you choose which ones to hold, you draw to replace your discards in an attempt to improve your hand.
As a result of this similarity, a poker player who is not entirely familiar with video poker could be prone to making certain errors. Although the basic hand types are the same, video poker is not poker. Here are some of the critical differences:
In order to win more money in a live poker game, you must bet more during the hand. In most video poker games you are not allowed to increase your bet, nor are you ever put at risk for more than your initial bet, yet it is possible to win many times your bet if you end up with a good hand.

Comparison

In live poker you can bluff in an attempt to convince another player that you have a strong hand. By betting when other players appear to be weak, it is sometimes possible to win a pot even though you don’t have the best hand. In video poker you can never bluff, nor can you win with any final hand less than the lowest hand on the payoff schedule. Instead of trying to make a better hand than your live-game opponents in order to win a pot, your only goal is trying to make a hand that will generate a payoff. Such things as a kicker, the ranks of two pair, or how high the top end of a flush or a straight is, have no significance in most video poker games. In live draw poker, holding a "kicker" (an unmatched card, usually an ace) with a pair may sometimes be a good play. Besides the possibility of making two pair, aces up, this gives you deceptive value; that is, your opponents may think you’re drawing to three of a kind. Since deception is of absolutely no value in video poker, and two pair pays the same regardless of the ranks, holding a kicker only reduces the chances of making three of a kind or better.

The most common error players make in any video poker game is holding too many cards. More than any other version of the game, deuces wild offers even more opportunities to make errors through hunches or false concepts. One common error is to hold one or more high cards when there is nothing to go with them. A high pair is not a paying hand in Deuces Wild; high cards have the same value as low cards. To play video poker correctly you must set aside many of the concepts of live poker. Live poker is a game of mathematics and people, with the people aspect growing in importance as the stakes increase. Video poker is strictly a game of solitary mathematics regardless of the denomination. (However, it may be correct to consider the effects of other players on your game if you are playing a machine that is tied into a bank with a very large common progressive payoff that will reset to a low value when anyone on the bank of machines hits it.)

Brief History of Video Poker