When it comes to playing poker, you either know what you’re doing, or you try to pretend like you know what you’re doing. When it comes to playing head to head with others, or even online, you often times get to learn as you go, but that doesn’t ring true when it comes to trying to win at video poker. Unfortunately, most video poker machines that you find at major casinos aren’t rigged the same way as your friendly neighborhood game or even tournament. If you want to win, you’ll have to take what you’ve learned from playing in real games, and filter it through a few components. Consider the following 3 tips when trying to make your mark with modern technology and your growing poker skills.

Know Your Hands – The one thing that you’re going to have to absolutely remember is the winning hand. Not every hand will get you a winning bet when it comes to video style gaming. Unfortunately, you’re going to end up losing big if you don’t recall what combination of cards gets you money. To make it easy, throw away the notion of a high card. You will not win anything with a high card. You will only win when you have pairs, triples, four of a kind, flushes, straights, and that’s it. The average machine will not have you playing against the computer, but rather they are going to be trying to create an elaborate guessing game of sorts. Keep that in mind as you move forward.

Don’t Chase Flushes – The second tip is going to find many people happy when confronted with what might look like an opportunity to get a flush. One of the repeat offenses that video poker throws at the average gambler is the opportunity to get a flush. You’ll have to pay attention to how much you’ve bet, how many hands you’ve played and whether or not you’ve seen multiple cards of similar coat. Chasing a flush can seem fun, and once you have 3 out of the 5, you might want to draw 2 more cards, but more often than not, the computer will nail you and make you lose. Don’t chase flushes unless you have a good idea of all the cards that have been played. Counting helps here, but is discouraged on a grand scale.

Something’s Wild – If you are playing at a machine that allows deuces wild or jokers wild, take full advantage of these sets. If you have a hand that has five cards and one of them consists of a wild card, draw 3 cards and play with the odds a little to gain three of a kind. At the very least, you will have a pair, and you’ll win a safe bet.

The above are just 3 quick tips that will help you move forward with figuring out the tricky machines that many people think are simple. Video poker is not the same as playing head to head with someone else, it’s more of a “luck of the draw” type of component, but that doesn’t mean you won’t win. It just takes time to figure the machines out.

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