You walk into your favorite neighborhood bar, order a cold one, and there it is, glowing in the corner: a video poker machine. Most people drop in a few dollars and play on instinct, never thinking about what the machine is actually giving back. Honestly, that’s leaving serious money on the table.
Here’s the thing – video poker is genuinely one of the most player-friendly gambling formats in existence, but only if you know what you’re looking at. The difference between a great bar machine and a bad one comes down entirely to the paytable on the screen. And the gap between a smart player and a casual one? Surprisingly large.
The three bar game formats we’re breaking down below are not some casino fantasy. They are real, established variants with published, verifiable RTP figures. Let’s dive in.
The 9/6 Jacks or Better Bar Machine: The Gold Standard of Local Play
Walk up to any bar video poker terminal and look at two specific numbers: what the machine pays for a full house and what it pays for a flush. A full-pay Jacks or Better pay table, commonly labeled 9/6, pays nine coins for a full house and six coins for a flush when wagering one coin, and with perfect strategy, this structure yields a theoretical return of 99.54 percent. That is an extraordinarily thin house edge of less than half a percent.
The gold standard of video poker paytables remains the 9/6 Jacks or Better configuration, referring to the 9-coin payout for a full house and 6-coin payout for a flush based on a single-coin wager. In a bar environment, this is the machine you want to be sitting at.
Jacks or Better is the game that started it all, but it originally launched with almost exclusively full-pay 9/6 pay tables – casinos have since gotten greedier and are for the most part offering lower-pay games instead. Finding a true full-pay 9/6 machine at your local bar is becoming rarer, which is exactly why you need to check before you play.
Why the 9/6 Machine Beats Everything Else in the Room
Video poker represents the pinnacle of favorable odds in casino gaming, with certain variations offering RTPs exceeding 99.5% when played with perfect strategy – and Jacks or Better, the most common video poker variant, delivers a 99.54% RTP with optimal play, making it one of the most player-friendly games available.
To put that in plain English: imagine you’re playing a slot machine at the same bar. Online casino RTPs are significantly higher than retail locations – most online slots run 95 to 98 percent compared to 88 to 94 percent on the Las Vegas Strip. A 9/6 video poker machine at nearly 99.54% is simply in a different league from any nearby slot terminal.
Dropping to an 8/5 table reduces the return to approximately 97.30 percent, and that 2.24 percent swing translates to 224 coins lost per 10,000 wagered – over long sessions, this gap eclipses the impact of nearly every individual strategy error combined, reinforcing why Jacks or Better strategy always begins with the pay table, rather than the cards.
The Short-Pay Trap: What Most Bar Players Never Notice
Here’s what trips up most casual players. The machine looks identical. Same screen, same five-card layout, same excitement. But the numbers in the paytable column have been quietly shaved down. Players are much more likely to encounter short-pay versions such as 9/5, 8/6, 8/5, 7/5, and even 6/5 – and for every one unit reduction in pay, the game’s return is lowered about 1.1 percent, meaning it doesn’t take much to reduce the normally low house-edge video poker into nothing more than a slot machine in terms of return.
The 6/5 version of Jacks or Better is becoming increasingly common, and the return of this game is a paltry 94.99 percent – it simply should not be played. Compare that with a proper 9/6 machine paying back over 99.5% and you start to feel the difference in your wallet pretty quickly.
Always check the pay table before you start playing and look for machines with “full-pay” tables as these offer the best return to player – for example, a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush, which is a higher payout percentage than 8/5 or 7/5 versions. Two seconds of checking the screen can save you real money over time.
Bar Type 2: Full-Pay Deuces Wild – The Most Powerful Machine When You Can Find It
If the 9/6 Jacks or Better machine is the workhorse of bar video poker, then full-pay Deuces Wild is the rocket ship – when you can actually find one. With a full-pay table and optimal strategy, Deuces Wild offers an RTP of 100.76%. Let that sink in. The player has the mathematical edge, not the house.
Full-pay Deuces Wild is the 9/5 paytable variant with an RTP of 100.76% when played optimally. All four twos in the deck act as wild cards, completely changing how hands are formed and ranked. The game plays very differently from standard Jacks or Better, and the strategy chart is far more complex.
This game was once widely available at off-strip casinos in Las Vegas catering to locals, but because of the high payback percentage, it was eventually phased out – and in early 2023, the country’s last remaining full-pay Deuces Wild games were removed from Sam’s Town in Las Vegas, meaning this version is no longer available at any U.S. casino. So while understanding its historic RTP is valuable, players today will more commonly encounter near-full-pay versions in bars and smaller gaming venues.
Playing Deuces Wild: The Strategy Is Brutally Different
The variance of Deuces Wild at 25.83 is a bit higher than Jacks or Better, meaning you will need a bigger bankroll – around 10 percent bigger – to play at the same limit for the same amount of time, and the most important strategy advice is to NEVER DISCARD A DEUCE.
Think of a deuce in this game like a magic joker that can become anything you need. Deuces act as wilds, meaning you can use your deuce to create a straight, flush, three-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind, or even the legendary royal flush. This completely rewires how you evaluate every hand dealt.
The optimal strategy for Deuces Wild is very complex, with 60 various combinations whose rank you have to learn in order to master it completely – though the simple strategy is much less complicated and you will only give up around 0.05% of the theoretical payout when using basic strategy. In practical terms, even casual application of a basic Deuces Wild chart puts you in a very strong position at the bar machine.
Bar Type 3: Double Bonus Poker – The 10/7 Full-Pay Version
The third high-RTP machine worth hunting for in local bar settings is Double Bonus Poker. The full-pay Double Bonus machine uses a 10/7 pay table and offers an RTP of 100.17%, meaning that players have a 0.17% edge over the house with optimal strategy. Like full-pay Deuces Wild, this is an extraordinary machine to sit down at.
Double Bonus Poker is based on Jacks or Better but offers improved payouts for four-of-a-kind: while normal Jacks or Better offers a 25x payout for four-of-a-kind, Double Bonus Poker offers a 50x payout for four-of-a-kinds with fives through kings, while twos, threes, and fours offer an 80x payout, and four aces offer a 160x multiplier.
As with Deuces Wild, full-pay Double Bonus Poker machines are rare. However, they do still surface in some local bars and neighborhood gaming venues, particularly in states like Nevada where video poker density is highest. When you find one, treat it with respect and bring your strategy chart.
The Five-Coin Rule You Cannot Ignore
Across all three of these bar machine types, there is one ironclad rule. Max coins only. Playing fewer than five coins drops the overall RTP from 99.54 percent to about 98.01 percent, even with perfect decisions – making max-coin wagering a strategic requirement, not an optional risk.
The reason is the Royal Flush bonus. Every video poker machine is designed to pay a dramatically larger jackpot for a Royal Flush when you bet max coins. All Jacks or Better games provide a Royal Flush bonus for players who are playing five coins, and that is a significant portion of the expected return. Skipping the fifth coin essentially hands back a chunk of the RTP right at the start.
I think of it like this: imagine driving a sports car in second gear the entire time. It gets you there, but you’re wasting the machine entirely. Put the fifth coin in and play the game the way it was mathematically designed to be played.
Reading the Bar Machine Paytable in Under 10 Seconds
Video poker RTPs are determined exclusively by their paytables, which are displayed directly on the game screen – and for non-wild games like Double Double Bonus, the payouts for full houses and flushes govern RTP, so when someone refers to 9/6 Double Double Bonus it means a full house pays 9 credits and a flush pays 6, and this version has a return of 98.98%.
Pay tables are displayed directly on the machine screen with no hidden menus, and the fastest check involves scanning the full house and flush payouts, which account for the most significant shifts in expected value. You don’t need to memorize anything elaborate. Just look at two numbers before you sit down.
Let’s be real, most bar players never do this. They sit, they play, they lose more than they need to. Spending literally ten seconds looking at the paytable screen before inserting money is the single highest-ROI habit you can build as a bar video poker player.
Strategy Charts: The Legal Cheat Sheet No Bar Can Stop You Using
Understanding video poker strategy is essential for reaching the published RTP percentages, as wrong choices greatly decrease your expected returns – and each variant requires an individual strategy chart that outlines the best holding decisions for every possible hand combination. Luckily, these charts are freely available and entirely legal to use.
Video poker has emerged as a preferred alternative due to its strategic depth – unlike pure luck-based games, it allows players to apply logic and probability, which creates a perception of control, a comforting factor during economic instability, and this perception aligns well with a population seeking both entertainment and a sense of agency over outcomes.
Each type of video poker game like Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, or Double Bonus has its own optimal strategy, and you can study strategy charts for your chosen game to maximize expected value. Print one off, fold it in your wallet, and pull it out while you play. No bar staff will bat an eye. You’re not cheating. You’re just playing smart.
Why Bar Video Poker Is Growing – and What It Means for Smart Players
Analytics from major operators in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 indicate a notable increase in the volume of video poker sessions, with some markets reporting growth as high as 28% compared to the same period in 2023. The format is genuinely having a moment, and bars with high-RTP machines are quietly becoming go-to spots for savvy recreational gamblers.
Surveys conducted across the UK, Canada, and parts of the EU reveal that players often cite “more control over outcomes” and “strategic appeal” as primary reasons for choosing video poker. This is not a coincidence. People are getting smarter about where they put their entertainment dollars.
The bottom line is simple. The three machine types covered here – 9/6 Jacks or Better, near-full-pay Deuces Wild, and 10/7 Double Bonus Poker – represent the absolute ceiling of what a bar video poker machine can offer a prepared player. Video poker games have some of the highest RTP values of all gambling games, usually around 99%, and thanks to its poker elements, video poker is partly a game of skill, which means you can use strategies to improve your chances of winning. The bar stool is the same wherever you sit. The machine you choose to sit at, however, makes all the difference. What would you have guessed the house edge was at your local bar machine before reading this?
