If you can play on a Deuces Wild machine with a good pay chart, bet five coins, and use the strategy chart, you can play with a house edge of just over a quarter%. Once you get used to using the strategy chart, you’re going to be able to play quickly and have the best chance to win.

The gameplay in Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is no different than it is in any other video poker game. You start by deciding how many coins you want to bet. As with most VP games, you can choose to play for anywhere between 1 and 5 coins.

• Deuces Wild is the most popular wild-card version of video poker. Read our deuces wild guide to learn about pay tables, strategy, and rules. Full pay Deuces Wild refers to Deuces Wild machines that offer the maximum pay table. Full pay games provide players with the best odds, although they are not guaranteed wins.
• There are many options to choose from when playing video poker. Here we list 9 reasons why Deuces Wild is the absolute best. Why Deuces Wild is the Best Video Poker Choice – 9 Reasons. By Michael Stevens in Casino & Gaming on May 18. Deuces Wild strategy ranks 4 cards to a straight flush higher than 3 cards to a royal flush in this.

But you should always bet 5 coins, no matter what.

Here’s why:

The best paying hand in the game is the royal flush, and it pays off at 800 to 1—but only if you’ve made the max coin bet. If you bet 4 coins or fewer, the royal flush only pays off at 250 to 1. A royal flush only shows up once every 40,000 hands or so, but the payout for the hand is so high that it makes a noticeable difference in your overall payback percentage.

Once you’ve placed your bet, you’re dealt a hand of 5 cards. Keep in mind that Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is a gambling machine. When we way that you’re dealt a hand of 5 cards, we’re talking about animation on a computer monitor. But one of the big differences between video poker and slot machines is the use of a deck of cards.

Here’s why that’s important:

On a slot machine, you get paid off based on what combination of symbols appear on the screen. But you have no way to know what the odds of getting a particular symbol are. You also have no decisions to make which can affect your odds.

A slot machine is a completely opaque game where you insert money and sometimes get money back. You have no way of knowing what the inner workings of the game are.

But a video poker machine, on the other hand, bases its symbols on playing cards. And they base the probability of getting any of those symbols on a deck of playing cards, too. Any particular card has a probability of 1/52 of showing up.

The major one is that, since the payoffs for the game are based on poker hand rankings, we can calculate the payback percentage for the machine. We’ll talk about that more in the section on probability and pay tables below, but for now, the main thing to know is that we have the information we need to calculate the house edge for Bonus Deuces Wild.

Once you get your 5 cards, you get to decide if you want to keep all of them or some of them. The cards you decide to get rid of are replaced by the computer, and your final hand ranking determines how much you get paid in winnings.

This is an important distinction, too. Not only do we know the math behind the game, but we have decisions to make. These decisions can affect our return on the machine.

Here’s a simple, absurd example of how incorrect play could cost you a lot of money on a video poker machine.

Let’s say you’re dealt a natural royal flush. You still have the option of discarding any or all of those cards. If you do so, you give up an 800 to 1 payoff. No matter what happens, you’re going to come out way behind where you would have come out if you had just held onto your natural royal flush.

Every hand has 32 possible ways to play it, based on which cards and how many you keep and/or discard. That might sound like a lot, but it’s not too hard to break it down:

You can keep all 5 cards. That’s one choice.

You can discard all 5 cards. That another choice, for a total of 2.

You can discard 4 cards and keep 1 card. There are 5 different ways to do that, based on which cards you keep and which one you throw away.

And so on, all the way down to keeping a single card and discarding the other 4.

Of all 32 of these choices, on any given hand, only one choice will have the highest expected value. The expected value is the probability of winding up with a given payoff averaged across all the possibilities and factoring in the likelihood of each.

Here’s the other distinguishing characteristic of this game, and you probably already figured it out.

The 2s count as wild cards. They can stand in for a card that you need in order to complete a hand. This makes the play of this game considerably different from what you’d expect playing something like Jacks or Better. The wild cards make it more likely that you’ll have a stronger hand.

Once you get your final hand, you get paid off based on the pay table. It lists all the possible final hands along with how much they pay off. We cover the details of Deuces Wild Bonus Poker pay tables in the next section

Deuces Wild is an exciting video poker game because it offers players the opportunity to gain an edge over the casino. With the right payout table, a Deuces Wild player can enjoy an edge over the casino of 0.76%, but the player only has this edge if she’s making the mathematically correct decisions. That’s where the strategy comes into play.

Casinos expect most gamblers to just play using common sense, intuition, and hunches. It’s estimated that this adds between 2% and 4% to the casino’s edge. Even a full pay Deuces Wild video poker game is a profitable game for the casino in the long run.

Deuces Wild Pay Tables

Deuces Wild has a wide range of pay tables, but the most important ones to be aware of are the full pay and the NSU (not-so-ugly) pay tables. In Jacks or Better, it’s easy to spot the difference in pay tables, because the payouts are only changed on two hands—the full house and the flush. But in Deuces Wild, the variations happen across more hands.

Here are the full pay payouts:

Deuces Wild Video Poker

• Royal flush – 800 to 1
• Four deuces – 200 to 1
• Wild royal flush – 25 to 1
• Five of a kind – 15 to 1
• Straight flush – 9 to 1
• Four of a kind – 5 to 1
• Full house – 3 to 1
• Flush – 2 to 1
• Straight – 2 to 1
• Three of a kind – 1 to 1

The payback percentage for this version is 100.76% when played with perfect strategy.

Here are the payouts for a NSU (not-so-ugly) game:

• Royal flush – 800 to 1
• Four deuces – 200 to 1
• Wild royal flush – 25 to 1
• Five of a kind – 16 to 1
• Straight flush – 10 to 1
• Four of a kind – 4 to 1
• Full house – 4 to 1
• Flush – 3 to 1
• Straight – 2 to 1
• Three of a kind – 1 to 1

The payback percentage on this version is 99.73%.

You might think, looking at the pay tables, that the 2nd version is better than the first. After all, you get a better payout on that 2nd pay table on four hands, and you get a lower payout on only two hands. The difference is the frequency with which you receive those hands.

The four of a kind is a particularly important hand in Deuces Wild. Since there are four wild cards in the deck, the chance of getting a four of a kind is a relatively large 6.5%. Reducing the payout on this hand makes up for a lot of the difference in returns.

The Strategy Chart for Deuces Wild Video Poker

The strategy chart for Deuces Wild is divided into five charts, based on the number of deuces in your hand. You should remember two rules about deuces in this game:

1. You’ll never discard a deuce.
2. You’ll never hold any single card UNLESS it’s a deuce.

If you have four deuces, then you only have one option. You discard the card that’s not a deuce and draw a new card.

If you have three deuces, then you start from the top and work you way down until you find the decision that applies to you:

• Keep a wild royal flush.
• Keep five of a kind—in other words, if the two cards that aren’t deuces are a pair, you have five of a kind.
• Otherwise, keep your deuces and draw two new cards.

Video Poker Deuces Wild Free Poker

If you have two deuces, the chart gets a little more complicated:

• Keep a wild royal flush.
• Keep five of a kind.
• Keep a straight flush.
• Keep four of a kind.
• Keep four cards to a wild royal flush.
• Keep four cards to a straight flush draw.
• Otherwise, draw three cards and keep your deuces.

Free Poker Games Deuces Wild

If you only have one deuce, then the chart gets even more complicated, but it’s still not too unwieldy:

• Keep a wild royal flush.
• Keep five of a kind.
• Keep a straight flush.
• Keep four of a kind.
• Keep four cards to a wild royal flush.
• Keep a full house.
• Keep a four card straight flush.
• Keep three of a kind.
• Keep a flush.
• Keep a straight.
• Keep four cards to a straight flush with one gap.
• Keep four cards to a straight flush with two gaps.
• Keep A34 suited, A35 suited, or A45 suited. (Don’t forget to keep your deuce, too.)
• Keep three cards to a royal flush with no ace.
• Keep three cards to a straight flush.
• Keep three cards to a royal flush with an ace.
• Keep the deuce and draw four more cards.

If you have no deuces, then you use the following chart:

• Keep a royal flush.
• Keep four cards to a royal flush.
• Keep a straight flush.
• Keep four of a kind.
• Keep a full house.
• Keep three of a kind.
• Keep a flush.
• Keep a straight.
• Keep four cards to a straight flush.
• Keep three cards to a royal flush.
• Keep one pair.
• Keep four cards to a flush.
• Keep four cards to an open straight draw.
• Keep a three card straight flush.
• Keep TQ suited or JQ suited.
• Keep four cards to a straight.
• Draw five new cards.

Simple Strategy Tips

If you don’t want to memorize those tables, keep these tips in mind, and you’ll still do better than most gamblers:

Deuces Wild Video Poker Strategy

• Always hold any deuces that you have.
• Always prefer a pair to a four card straight or to a four card flush.
• Never hold two pair.

Deuces Wild Poker Machine

You should also keep in mind that four of a kind is your bread and butter. You’ll get this hand once in every 15 hands, but the payout is good. This should clarify some of the strategy decisions in the table above.