Video Poker Compulsion

By Will Veda

I once heard that Video Poker has been dubbed the crack cocaine of casino gambling.  I can say that I am a victim.  Many years ago, my entertainment cabinet felt the wrath of an addiction from playing Nintendo’s “Tetris.”  Out of anger of bad beats, nicks and dents cover the lower cabinet’s door from my vicious hand controller flinging.  “Why didn’t I get that damn straight bar?”  I had a bad obsession with a video game and now Video Poker is my new “Tetris.”  According to gaming studies, it has been found that the “skillful” slot machine is the most addicting game in the casino.  Believe me, I know.  I can walk from Blackjack when the cards are not going my way.  I can saunter away from Craps when the dice turn ugly.  But I have a really hard time leaving the poker machines until I receive a profit or until my buy-ins are history or until I bloody my knuckles on the machine’s facing.   “Why didn’t I get that damn straight?”  

But…I have had a lot of success playing Video Poker, too.  Many of these successes have fully paid for trips to Las Vegas. 

Just like it sounds, Video Poker is a game of poker played on a video screen.   The gist is to make a winning poker hand out of cards dealt on the machine based on five-card draw.  The machine deals five cards initially – the player presses a button marked “hold” under each card for the ones that he wants to keep.  He then presses the “draw” button and additional cards replace the discarded ones.  Standard poker hands are used to determine winners based on a pay table, but the lowest winning hand is usually a pair of Jacks (sometimes tens). 

There are several variations of machines and many more continuously being introduced.  With “perfect play,” like Blackjack’s basic strategy, a person can do fairly well.  But these machines can go cold and not deal a winning hand for what seems like forever.  I used to play VP as a hit and run game, meaning I set a loss limit and quit when reached, but the addiction took over and made Video Poker my most played casino game.   

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