by Mark Pilarski

Video poker is based on the classic game Five Card Stud, which challenges players to compose the best possible five-card hand. The player is dealt five cards with the option of discarding any or all of them for replacement with newly dealt cards. Although video poker and Five Card Stud are kissing cousins, good video poker players don’t necessarily make for good poker players, and vice versa.

There are many important differences, Gary, between video poker and its table game relative. For starters, video poker payoffs are based on a scale, paying players for hands as low as a pair of tens or Jacks all the way up to a Royal Flush.

In video poker, a machine, not a dealer, represents the house.

There are no opponents to bluff, nor any 21-year-old whippersnapper who, on every other hand, goes all in. If you have Jacks-or-better, you win. But in table poker, you could have two pair and lose to another player who has three of a kind.

A good decision in Jacks-or-better can be a bad one on a table game. For instance, a kicker, a high card with a pair, can be at times advantageous to hold in table poker, but should always be discarded on a video poker machine. I could keep going, Gary, but I figure by now you’re getting the gist.

A better way of acquiring poker skills without spending a boatload of quarters on a video poker game is with a computer. A decent poker software program can be far superior to even my yakking in your ear, for both training and drilling. The benefit of computer training is its ability to test different strategies at no financial risk, even with simulated high-speed play. Whether at high speeds or at a live game pace, the software accumulates plenty of data for later review. This will enable you to spot costly trends that you could have been making on a live poker game. The key here, Gary, is that any knowledge obtained without a casino outlay will make you more dough down the road.

And then there’s the Lazy Boy way, with a good book on poker – Doyle Brunson’s Super System 2 is a good start – or just watching it on the boob tube. Why, at this very moment some poker tournament is showing on at least a half dozen cable stations.