Jacks or Better video poker at Fair Go

The Jacks or Better pay table, and why 9-6 matters

Every video poker game deals from a fresh 52-card deck each hand, so the odds of each final hand are fixed by the maths of the cards. The only thing a casino can change is the pay table, and that's how you tell a good machine from a poor one.

In Jacks or Better, look at the full house and the flush. The full-pay table pays 9 and 6 (per coin), so it's called 9-6. With perfect strategy it returns 99.54%, the figure Fair Go quotes. Each unit cut from those two lines costs about a percent:

• 9-6 (full pay)99.54%
• 8-597.30%
• 7-596.15%
• 6-595.00%

Open the pay table in Fair Go's game and check those two numbers before you play. If they read 9 and 6, you're on the table Fair Go's RTP figure describes.

How to play Jacks or Better

1. Set your coin size and coins. Your bet per hand is coin size times coins, usually up to five.
2. Deal. You get five cards.
3. Hold. Tap the cards you want to keep. Everything else will be replaced.
4. Draw. The replaced cards come from the rest of the same deck, and your final hand is paid from the pay table. A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces is the smallest paying hand and returns your stake.

Notice the royal flush line. It pays 250 per coin with one to four coins but 800 per coin (4,000) with five. That bonus is worth more than 1% of return, so play five coins and choose a smaller coin size if you want a lower stake.

Jacks or Better strategy: what to hold

Perfect strategy needs a computer, but a simplified chart gets within about a tenth of a percent of it. Work down this list and hold the first thing that matches your hand:

1. Royal flush, straight flush or four of a kind (keep all five where they pay).
2. Four cards to a royal flush.
3. Full house, flush, straight or three of a kind.
4. Four cards to a straight flush.
5. Two pair.
6. A high pair (jacks or better).
7. Three cards to a royal flush.
8. Four cards to a flush.
9. A low pair (2s to 10s).
10. Four cards to an open-ended straight.
11. Two suited high cards.
12. Three cards to a straight flush.
13. Two unsuited high cards (if you have three, keep the lowest two).
14. A suited 10 with a jack, queen or king.
15. One high card.
16. Nothing: draw five new cards.

Three rules that surprise people: a low pair beats holding a single high card, four to a flush beats a low pair, and you never keep a "kicker" beside a pair.

Playing 1 to 100 hands at once

Fair Go says its video poker lets you play anywhere from 1 to 100 hands at once. In multi-hand play you hold cards once, and those cards are copied to every hand. Each hand then draws its replacements from its own separate deck.

The return per hand doesn't change: optimal play is the same and every hand still returns 99.54% over the long run on the full-pay table. What changes is the stake per deal. Ten hands at 25c and five coins is $12.50 a deal, and a hundred hands is $125. Results also bunch together, because a strong hold pays across many hands at once, and a bad draw loses across all of them.

That matters with a bonus. While you're clearing one, Fair Go caps bets at $10, so set coins and hands so the total per deal stays inside the cap, and check its bonus terms to see how video poker counts towards the 30x wagering.

Jacks or Better vs Bonus Poker

Fair Go also lists Bonus Poker, the first step up the bonus ladder. It keeps the Jacks or Better structure but pays extra for four of a kind: 80 per coin for four aces, 40 for four 2s, 3s or 4s, and 25 for other quads. To pay for that, the standard table trims the full house to 8 and the flush to 5. That version returns 99.17% with perfect play, slightly less than full-pay Jacks or Better, with a little more swing.

From there the family branches out: Aces and Eights rewards two specific quads, Double Double Bonus goes big on aces with kickers, and Deuces Wild changes the game entirely with wild cards. All of them are listed on our video poker page.

More video poker at Fair Go

Every game below uses the same deal-hold-draw format with a different pay table. Learn Jacks or Better first and the rest are small adjustments.

• • Video poker

  Play now: Bonus Poker (affiliate link, opens in a new tab)Info about Bonus Poker

  Bonus Poker

• • Video poker

  Play now: Aces and Eights (affiliate link, opens in a new tab)Info about Aces and Eights

  Aces and Eights

• • Video poker

  Play now: Deuces Wild (affiliate link, opens in a new tab)Info about Deuces Wild

  Deuces Wild

• • Table game

  Play now: Caribbean Stud Poker (affiliate link, opens in a new tab)Info about Caribbean Stud Poker

  Caribbean Stud Poker

Jacks or Better FAQ