If you have ever spent time wandering the casino floor, you likely noticed that video poker machines look nearly identical at a glance. They feature the same flashing lights, familiar five-card draw layout, and identical royal flush payout promises at the top of the glass. Because of this surface-level uniformity, many casual players assume that all video poker games are created equal, provided the game title remains the same. This assumption is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make in a casino.
Beneath the flashing interface lies a mathematical blueprint known as the pay table. This chart dictates the exact return for every winning hand combination. Two machines side-by-side might both display Jacks or Better, yet one machine can offer a theoretical return of over 99.5 percent while the other struggles below 95 percent. The difference between these machines comes down to a fundamental casino industry division: full pay tables versus short pay tables. Understanding this distinction transforms video poker from a game of pure chance into one of the few casino offerings where player skill and game selection genuinely dictate long-term success.
Understanding the Anatomy of a Video Poker Pay Table
To comprehend why pay tables matter so much, you need to understand how video poker functions mechanically. Unlike slot machines, which rely on hidden random number generator algorithms and secret reel weightings to determine payouts, video poker is entirely transparent. A standard deck contains 52 cards, and every single hand is dealt from a randomized deck with no memory of previous rounds.
Because the deck is mathematically finite and completely known, every possible starting hand and subsequent discard combination has a calculable mathematical expectation. The pay table acts as the fixed contract between you and the machine. It tells you precisely what every winning combination pays out for a specific coin or credit denomination.
When software providers design a video poker variant, they construct a baseline mathematical model. For classic games like Jacks or Better, this baseline model yields a specific percentage of return over millions of simulated hands. However, casinos rarely keep models uniform. They frequently alter the payouts for standard hands—most notably the Full House and the Flush—to decrease the machine’s overall payout percentage. These alterations create the rift between full pay and short pay versions of the exact same game.
Deconstructing Full Pay Tables
A full pay table represents the most generous version of a specific video poker variant widely available to players. These are the configurations that professional advantage players seek out, as they offer the highest possible Return to Player percentages, often approaching or even exceeding 100 percent when paired with optimal strategy.
Take the classic Jacks or Better game as the benchmark example. The full pay version of Jacks or Better is universally referred to by players and mathematicians as the 9/6 game. These numbers are not arbitrary; they refer directly to the payouts for two specific hands based on a single-coin play structure:
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9 for 1 payout on a Full House
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6 for 1 payout on a Flush
In a 9/6 Jacks or Better setup, the remainder of the pay table looks exceptionally strong as well:
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Royal Flush: 4,000 coins (when playing the maximum 5 coins)
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Straight Flush: 50 coins
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Four of a Kind: 25 coins
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Full House: 9 coins
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Flush: 6 coins
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Straight: 4 coins
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Three of a Kind: 3 coins
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Two Pair: 2 coins
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Jacks or Better: 1 coin
When you run the math on these specific payouts across every possible card combination, the theoretical return climbs to 99.54 percent. This means that for every 100 dollars you cycle through the machine over the long run, the house theoretical edge is a razor-thin 46 cents.
Other legendary full pay variants exist across different game types. For instance, Deuces Wild features a full pay table commonly known as “Not So Ugly Ducks” or true full pay versions that can return over 100.7 percent with perfect strategy. These games are rare on modern casino floors, but they serve as the gold standard for advantage gaming.
Unpacking Short Pay Tables
As casinos looked for ways to increase their profit margins on low-edge video poker machines, they realized they could easily tweak a couple of numbers on the glass without changing the external branding of the game. This gave birth to the short pay table—often disparagingly referred to by players as “reducted” or “leprechaun” pay tables.
A short pay table occurs when the casino reduces the payout for one or more common winning hands. Sticking with our Jacks or Better example, the casino might drop the Full House payout from 9 to 8, and the Flush payout from 6 to 5. This creates what the industry calls an 8/5 Jacks or Better game.
At first glance, dropping a Full House payout by a single coin and a Flush by a single coin might seem trivial. After all, how often do those specific hands change your overall session? However, because Full Houses and Flushes occur frequently during normal play, these tiny reductions compound exponentially over thousands of hands.
The mathematical impact on an 8/5 Jacks or Better game drops the theoretical return from 99.54 percent down to roughly 97.30 percent. If the casino becomes even more aggressive and drops the pay table to 7/5 or 6/5, the return plummets further, sometimes dropping below 95 percent.
To put this in perspective, consider the house edge difference:
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9/6 Full Pay Jacks or Better: House Edge of ~0.46 percent
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8/5 Short Pay Jacks or Better: House Edge of ~2.70 percent
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6/5 Short Pay Jacks or Better: House Edge of ~5.00 percent
By moving from a full pay machine to a 6/5 short pay machine, you have multiplied the house edge by more than ten times. The casino is extracting money from your bankroll at a rate comparable to many high-hold slot machines, all while making you think you are playing a game of skill.
The Domino Effect on Strategy
The differences between full pay and short pay tables go far beyond simple payout reductions. When the mathematical value of a specific hand changes, the fundamental strategy required to play the game optimally must also shift. Professional video poker players memorize complex strategy charts that tell them exactly which cards to hold and which to discard based on the specific pay table in front of them.
Consider a scenario where you are dealt a hand containing four cards to a Flush alongside a high pair. In a 9/6 full pay game, the value of hitting that Flush is higher because it pays 6 for 1. In a 6/5 short pay game, the value of the Flush is diminished because it only pays 5 for 1. Consequently, the correct mathematical play changes. You might be forced to hold different combinations because the risk-reward ratio of chasing drawing hands alters with the pay table.
Playing a short pay machine with a strategy optimized for a full pay machine introduces even more leak into your bankroll. You are making suboptimal decisions on a game that is already stacked against you, compounding your expected losses.
How Casinos Hide Short Pay Tables
Casinos do not advertise short pay tables. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure players cannot easily spot the difference. A bank of video poker machines on a casino floor will often mix different pay table versions together. You might find two full pay machines sitting directly next to three short pay machines, all sharing the same vibrant cabinet design and game title graphics.
Physical placement plays a psychological role as well. Full pay machines are occasionally relegated to high-limit rooms where coin-in requirements are steeper, forcing casual bankrolls onto the short pay units scattered across the main floor. In modern tribal casinos and commercial venues alike, multi-game machines—where you can switch between Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, and Double Double Bonus at will—almost universally house short pay variants to account for the software versatility.
Reading the pay table before feeding a single dollar into the machine is the single most important habit a video poker player can develop. Never trust the game title on the marquee. Look directly at the payout rows for the Full House and the Flush. If those two numbers are not 9 and 6 on a Jacks or Better machine, you are playing a short pay table.
Making the Right Choice at the Machine
Navigating the landscape of modern video poker requires vigilance, discipline, and a willingness to walk away from bad games. While finding true full pay tables on the standard casino floor has become increasingly difficult outside of dedicated locals joints or specific jurisdictions like Las Vegas locals casinos, knowing what to look for shields your bankroll from unnecessary bleeding.
If your goal is purely entertainment and you enjoy the flashing lights and mechanical pacing of video poker, playing a short pay game occasionally will not ruin your evening, provided you budget accordingly. However, if your objective is to minimize the house advantage, stretch your entertainment budget as far as possible, and give yourself a genuine statistical fighting chance, you must hunt exclusively for full pay tables.
Treat every video poker machine as a puzzle. Check the glass, verify the math, and never assume that two games bearing the same name offer the same value. By prioritizing game selection over blind luck, you reclaim control over your casino experience.
