Top 5 Costly Video Poker Mistakes to Avoid
3 minutes
Last Updated: November 12, 2022
Video poker offers some of the best RTP percentages you can find in any casino game. That said, even these favorable RTPs don’t mean much if you don’t play video poker optimally, let alone if you make mistakes.
We’ve outlined five common and costly video poker mistakes that can cost you a lot of money in the long run.
1. Not Respecting Your Bankroll
This is one of the most apparent and, unfortunately, one of the most common video poker mistakes players make.
While video poker machines have a very low house edge, you can still lose money if you’re not careful. So, the first thing you need to know is the size of your bankroll. Moreover, you need to understand what you can and can’t do with it.
To avoid playing above your bankroll, you should calculate the expected value and expected loss of your bets per hour based on your bet size.
This is a bit more challenging to determine, but you can find a lot of helpful guides on this online at 789betting and other similar sites.
In simple terms, your bankroll should cover up to 20 or more times your expected loss rate. So, if you calculate an expected loss rate of $20 per hour and plan on playing for two hours, you need a bankroll of at least $400.
This is enough money to cover a run of bad results and recover during the session, so you don’t go home with empty pockets.
2. Playing Too Many Hands
On average, a video poker player plays about 400 hands per hour. Moreover, a skilled video poker player looking to play fast can push this number up to 700 or 800 hands an hour.
However, this isn’t something you should strive for, as you’ll most likely be just throwing your money away.
If anything, you should go the opposite way and try to lower the number of hands per hour. For instance, if you slow down to 200 or 300, you’ll minimize the amount of money you can lose and increase the time you can play with the same bankroll.
3. Chasing Stronger Hands
Of course, every poker player would like to hit a royal flush on every video poker hand they play. But, real-life numbers show that such situations happen on average once in 40,000 hands.
Let’s use the previous example of 400 hands per hour. This means that you’ll see a royal flush once in every 100 of playing video poker.
This is an extreme example, but it is no surprise that higher-valued hands come less frequently. With this in mind, you shouldn’t count on them to make you steady profits and disregard the lower-valued hands.
What’s more, the lower-valued hands will make most of your profits. So, don’t make the mistake of breaking lower-valued hands in the hopes of landing a big win.
4. Not Getting Bonuses and Comps
Online casinos provide the amazing advantage of offering bonuses to both newcomers and existing casino players. This can be through free money, deposit bonuses, or even cashback comps based on how much money you lose in a particular game.
The latter can be especially valuable for video poker players. At first sight, the small amount of money you get back doesn’t make any noticeable difference.
But, when you consider the long-term scheme, every dollar you get back reduces your overall losses and allows you to play more.
Because of this, you should never skip on comps and should always look for bonuses to get additional value for your video poker gambling sessions. This doesn’t affect your gameplay, so why not get free money for the game you would play anyway?
5. Not Focusing on the Game
Video poker involves a good deal of skill, so you can’t just press the button and wait for the outcome as you can do in slot games.
For this reason, you can’t afford to play without paying attention, as this mistake will undoubtedly cost you money.
If you don’t feel like you can focus on each hand, starting a session is probably a mistake. If the land-based casino is too crowded for you to concentrate, if you feel tired or in a bad mood while playing at home, or have been drinking, it’s best to avoid playing altogether
