Are the Good Days Numbered for Video Poker?

Playing video poker for a living is something the casinos don't want you to do. And if it could be helped, you wouldn't want them to know about it. But there is no way to keep the fact from them because just as soon as one expert gambler shares their secret with the rest of the pack, the casinos are in it too. That was what happened in the blackjack world when Edward Thorp revealed his card counting techniques to the gambling community in the 1960s. And unfortunately, the same is true for video poker.

Bob Dancer is perhaps the most well-known professional video poker player of all. Before he released his book Million Dollar Video Poker, Deuces Wild weren't hard to find. Now with the published works of Dancer and other experts, the game has become scarcer. And is it any wonder why? With more and more people mastering the game, casinos are no longer making money from the game. Everywhere there is a full-pay Deuces Wild machine, the house is sure to lose.

As a result, the number of full-pay Deuces Wild machines has steadily dwindled. Since the turn of the century, as many as 80-90% of these games have disappeared. And this trend will continue not only with Deuces Wild but other games as well, as players get smarter and the casinos try to outsmart them.

You may wonder why we speak of full-pay Deuces Wild. If you are unaware, Deuces Wild is a game in which al 2 cards are wild, i.e. can be considered as any card that helps the player's hand. The full-pay version has a return of 100.7% if played with flawless strategy. That is every video poker player's dream. Every expert will tell you, if there is only one game you can play, let it be full-pay Deuces Wild.

Yet the very thing that makes the game so attractive to players is the same reason casinos have targeted full-pay Deuces Wild for extinction. Every time gamblers find a "security hole" in the casino's system, the house scrambles to patch the hole, and the gamblers must find another security flaw to exploit. And so the battle for the gambling edge continues.

Today what few full-pay Deuces Wild games are left are quickly grabbed by expert players. That makes them even more sure losers for the casinos than before, when there were more machines to choose form and casual gamblers could still play them. It won't be long, it seems, before full-pay Deuces Wild will be gone for good.

For now, the 10/7 Double Bonus game is still available. With a payoff of just over 100%, it is the next best thing to full-pay Deuces Wild. Video poker players have to learn to keep looking for better games, and to keep adjusting their strategies to the shifting rules of the casino.