How to Play Deuces Wild Elite Video Poker

Deuces Wild Elite video poker presents a twist on basic wild card action with a more aggressive pay table than normal. This online-only game offers boosted payback for rare hands while lessening payback from some of the more common winning hands. As a result, the action is volatile, but the overall payback for the game is excellent.

Video poker has advanced far beyond the realm of the machines you can play in casinos. You can now find a robust selection of video poker offerings at top gambling websites. And many of these games are given a bit of an online-only twist to spice up play a bit.

One of those games is Deuces Wild Elite video poker. This online-only video poker offering looks a lot like the Deuces Wild games that can be found all over casinos. You’ll be playing with all of the twos in the deck as wild cards, so you can use them as any card in the deck to improve your hand.

Wild card action puts rare hands within your reach. Considering that four of the 52 cards in the deck are wild cards, you probably won’t go more than a few hands without seeing one appear. In fact, you’ll even have the chance for multiple wild cards in the same hand, which really opens up the possibilities.

In the case of Deuces Wild Elite video poker, all of this occurs with a pay table that offers some twists on what you might expect from Deuces Wild. There’s a much greater emphasis placed on five of a kind hands, which payback ladles out according to the rank involved. You’ll also see the involvement of kickers on the Deuces Wild Elite pay table, which doesn’t come into play on a normal Deuces Wild game.

Playing Deuces Wild Elite video poker will give you more chances at quick-strike type wins, where you corral a lot of money on just a single hand. But even though it provides that, the game doesn’t skimp on the overall payback. In fact, payback comes in at over 99%, which is highly coveted in video poker.

If there’s a drawback to Deuces Wild Elite video poker, it’s having to deal with a lot of volatility. This is because some of the more common winning hands are discounted from what you could expect in basic video poker. That means those common hands won’t help steady your bankroll in the same way.

As a result, you’ll be prone to bigger slumps in Deuces Wild Elite video poker. That goes hand in hand with the potential for bigger payback. To compensate, you might have to raise your bankroll to keep those slumps from draining it completely.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Deuces Wild Elite video poker. We’ll explain how to play basic video poker and how wild cards change that up. We’ll also get into the type of payback you can expect, as well as discuss how you can learn expert strategy.

The Benefits of Video Poker

There are many reasons why video poker games like Deuces Wild Elite video poker are so popular. And that goes for whether they’re found in casinos or can be played online. Quite simply, video poker combines all of the good things found in other casino games while largely eliminating the bad stuff.

You’ll find many aspects of both table games and slot machines within video poker. But it’s a game that is so much more than the sum of its parts. That’s why video poker players won’t gamble on other games.

Here are some of the reasons why people love video poker.

• Video poker is a solitary experience. All you need is the machine, or the online video poker game. There’s no need to deal with other casino employees or patrons, and you can enjoy absolute privacy to play at your discretion.
• Video poker is easy to learn. Among casino games, it’s one of the simplest to understand for beginning players, who usually can figure out basic play in minutes. As for those who already possess a background in poker, it’s no problem at all.
• Video poker is extremely varied. Deuces Wild Elite video poker is one of hundreds of different twists on the game that you’ll be able to find online or in casinos. That means you can be assured of finding a game that’s the perfect fit for your gambling needs.
• Video poker lets you play with strategy. It’s nice to be able to make an impact on whether you win or lose, even if there is still an element of luck involved. The fact is that those who make the correct decisions when playing video poker will make more money in the long run than those who don’t.
• Video poker lays it all out for you. You don’t have to guess how often winning hands will appear, since that’s all based on probability. And you’ll also know how much each winning hand pays, since the pay table contains that information.
• Video poker pays back pretty well. In terms of self-contained casino games, video poker easily outranks slot machines in the payback department. And there are many games, including Deuces Wild Elite video poker, which give you a legitimate chance for long-term profit.
• Video poker is an excellent fit for online play. You can’t really say the same about many casino table games. If you’re playing video poker at a top online casino, your experience will be pretty much the same as if you played in a casino, just without the noise and crowds.

That list gives you a few examples of why video poker is so beneficial. We said that it’s easy to learn. You can find that out for yourself as we take you step-by-step through basic video poker play before moving on to the specifics of Deuces Wild Elite video poker.

How to Play Video Poker

Step 1: Determine Your Bankroll

A bankroll needs to be in place for you to make wagers and collect your video poker winnings. To start a bankroll when playing online, you have to create an account at a gambling website then fund it with credit cards, cryptocurrency, or some other method. If you’re playing video poker in a casino, all you have to do to start up a bankroll is put money into the machine.

Your bankroll will register on the screen in units known as credits or coins. These units will be based on the denomination that you’ve chosen to play. For example, at a 25-cent machine, 5 credits would equal $1.25 (5 times .25).

Step 2: Make Your Bet

Many beginners don’t realize that betting is actually a part of video poker strategy. If you bet incorrectly, you’ll actually damage your potential payback. And you will bet incorrectly if you make anything other than the maximum wager, or “Max Bet,” on each hand.

You can bet between one and five credits, in one-credit increments, when playing Deuces Wild Elite video poker, which is the standard for most video poker games. Betting five credits unlocks the best possible payback for the royal flush hand.

If you bet between one and four credits, the royal flush will pay you back at 250 to 1. While that’s substantial, it falls well short of the 800 to 1 you’ll receive for a royal flush after betting five credits, or the max bet.

Betting five credits might be more of a financial commitment than you want to make. If you find that’s the case, switch to a lower denomination. Don’t lower your bet, which would lower your payback percentage.

Step 3: Play Your Hand

A hand of video poker plays out pretty much like a hand of Five-Card Draw Poker. In both cases, the player gets a five-card deal and then has to decide what he wants to hold and what he wants to discard from that group. The cards that are discarded will be replaced by others from the deck to complete the hand.

In Five-Card Draw, you have to beat everybody at the table to win the pot. That means either forming the best hand or staying in the hand until everyone else folds. You also have to worry about your betting as you decide when to bow out of the hand and when to stay in and try to bluff others.

But in video poker, you won’t have to worry about any of that. All you have to do to get some payback is to form one of the winning hands on the pay table. In the case of Deuces Wild Elite video poker, these are the hands you’ll be trying to achieve:

• Three of a kind
• Straight (five cards in a row in rank, like 3-4-5-6-7)
• Flush (five cards of same suit)
• Full house (three of a kind and two pair in the same hand)
• Four of a kind
• Straight flush (straight with five cards of same suit)
• Five of a kind
• Wild royal flush (royal flush achieved with the help of a wild card)
• Four wild cards
• Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)

In this list, the three of a kind hand at the top is the easiest to achieve and the lowest-paying. As you move down the list, you’ll find the hands get harder and harder to achieve and offer higher payback. Eventually, you get to the royal flush, which pays back the most but will appear during gameplay the least, on average.

What this shows is that you get paid based on the likelihood of attaining a hand. That facet of video poker is what makes the game so interesting to play. You have to decide when it’s wise to take a change on a high-paying hand and when it’s better to play it safe and go for one of the lower-paying hands.

When you make your bet and signal for the deal, you’ll see five cards on the screen. These five cards will come from a simulated deck of 52 cards which will contain exactly the same cards found in a standard deck.

Your chances of one of these cards never changes no matter how long you play a particular video poker game. Random number generator inside the software ensures randomness on every deal and draw.

Making Your Decisions

When you see your five cards, you’ll have to decide which cards you think are worth holding. They’ll be a part of your final hand. These cards will be the ones that you think will give you of forming a winning combination on the draw, if you don’t have one already on the deal.

Meanwhile, the cards you don’t want will be discarded and replaced by others from the deck. The draw deck will have only 47 cards in it, since the ones you were dealt won’t be included.

Once you make this decision, you’ll press the buttons corresponding to the cards you want to hold, if there are any. You’ll then signal for the draw. Any discarded cards will be replaced and the hand will be complete.

Even though this might seem like a long process from the description, in actuality, a video poker hand will take just a few seconds or so. This is especially the case once you get the hang of the game and have a better feel of what to hold and discard in all situations. We’ll talk more about that when we get to strategy.

If you want to play more than one hand of video poker, simply keep repeating the necessary steps for as long as you have credits in your bankroll. You can also quit at any point and redeem your winnings.

That’s how basic video poker works. Knowing that will give you the foundation to try out the wild card play of Deuces Wild Elite video poker.

Playing Video Poker With Wild Cards

A wild card is any card determined before the start of play that can be changed into any other card in the deck. Wild cards are used to form the best, highest-paying winning hand. In the case of Deuces Wild Elite video poker, all the twos, or deuces, in the deck are wild.

Having four out of 52 designated as wild cards means that they will come up often during game play. This is in contrast to Joker Wild video poker, which includes just a single joker as a wild card in a special deck of 53.

Wild cards aren’t officially transformed into another card until your hand is final. At that point, the game will automatically recognize what card best completes the hand to make it as lucrative as possible.

Up to that point though, meaning when you receive a deuce on the deal, you’ll have to do some speculating on how it might be used. That’s why Deuces Wild Elite video poker adds an extra layer of strategy to the game. Let’s take a look at how that plays out by taking an example.

Sample Wild Card Hand

Imagine that you receive the following deal when playing Deuces Wild Elite video poker:

In a normal situation, this wouldn’t be the best deal in video poker history. As a matter of fact, many would consider discarding all five cards. At the very least, in Jacks or Better where a high pair pays something back, you would probably hold on to the King.

But remember, we’re talking about Deuces Wild Elite video poker, where twos are wild. Therefore, you know that you’ll be holding on to the two of spades, due to its value as a wild card. The question: What else will you hold with it?

You could hold the other three clubs, in the hopes of making a flush. With all of the clubs left in the deck and three other wild cards, you’d have an excellent chance of making this happen (around one in four). But the payoff wouldn’t be that rewarding.

And you could do something similar by holding the six, seven, and eight, which would put the straight into play. In much the same way as if you were going for flush, it would be a relatively high-percentage play. But you wouldn’t be looking at payback that was very exciting.

One other option would be to hold the wild card along with just the six and seven of clubs. This would allow you to draw two other cards and keep open the possibility of many other winning hands. It would also give you a chance at a straight flush, which is one of the highest-paying combinations you could hope to achieve from this deal.

As you can see, the wild card opens up a world of possibilities. For the same of this example, let’s say that you decided to go for the flush by keeping the two along with the three clubs from the deal. Imagine that you received the following on the draw.

You didn’t get your flush. But you did get another seven. The wild card would thus be transformed into a seven to give you three of a kind, a paying hand on a Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table.

This example shows you just how flexible a wild card can be. You never thought going into the draw about the two being a seven. But, because of how the draw turned out, that’s exactly what it become.

Basically, if you get a two in your hand of Deuces Wild Elite video poker, your chances of forming a winning combination are strong. Once you get two wild cards in your hand, you are ensured of a winning combination, because, at the very least, you’ll make three of a kind.

By contrast, if you don’t get a wild card on the deal or draw in Deuces Wild Elite video poker, your chances of a winning combination will be much slimmer than your average video poker hand. That’s because, as you’ll see now, the pay tables for wild card game require a much stronger hand before you start getting payback.

Pay Table for Deuces Wild Elite Video Poker

Whenever you settle in to play a video poker game, whether in a casino or online, the first thing you should be doing is seeking out the pay table. It is an important piece of information that should tell you everything you need to know about a specific game.

On the surface, the pay table will reveal what you can expect in payback from winning combinations of cards. But look deeper and it will reveal strategy. Look even deeper and it brings to light important concepts like payback percentage and volatility.

For now, let’s take a look at the pay table in play for Deuces Wild Elite video poker.

Deuces Wild Elite Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Four deuces with an ace	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four deuces	200	400	600	800	1,000
Wild royal flush	25	50	75	100	125
Five aces	80	160	240	320	400
Five 3s, 4s or 5s	40	80	120	160	200
Five 6s through Ks	20	40	60	80	100
Straight flush	9	18	27	36	45
Four of a kind	4	8	12	16	20
Full house	3	6	9	12	15
Flush	3	6	9	12	15
Straight	1	2	3	4	5
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

At the top of the list, you’ll see illustrated what we talked about in the betting section above. There is a big jump in payback in the royal flush from one through four coins to five coins wagered.

Notice also that there’s a distinction between the royal flush at the top of the Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table and the wild royal flush. Simply put, a wild royal flush is one that includes a wild card, while the regular wild card does not.

Royal Flush:

Wild Royal Flush:

You can see how the wild royal flush only exists because one two will turn into the jack of spades and the other will turn into the king of spades. The pure royal flush is more difficult to achieve, which is why it pays much more.

For some context about the Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table, let’s take a look at a pay table for a common Deuces Wild game found in casinos:

Deuces Wild Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Four deuces	200	400	600	800	1,000
Wild royal flush	25	50	75	100	125
Five of a kind	16	32	48	64	80
Straight flush	10	20	30	40	50
Four of a kind	4	8	12	16	20
Full house	4	8	12	16	20
Flush	3	6	9	12	15
Straight	2	4	6	8	10
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

The first thing you’ll probably notice when comparing the two is that there are more winning combinations listed on the Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table. You’ll see that five of a kind hands are spilt by rank. Compare that to the common Deuces Wild game, where all five of a kind hands pay the same.

You’ll also see that Deuces Wild Elite video poker includes a special payback for any hand with four deuces and an ace “kicker.” The kicker is a term describing the fifth card in a hand that is not included in a four of a kind.

As you start to compare payback of the two games, you’ll see that Deuces Wild Elite video poker offers more payback on several winning combinations near the top of the pay table. Specifically, the five of a kind hands all offer more on the Elite pay table than on regular deuces wild.

You can get up to 80 to 1 (for five aces) on the Deuces Wild Elite video poker. Meanwhile, even the lowest of the five of a kind hands on that table (sixes through kings) pays 20 to 1. That’s still higher than all five of a kind hands pay on the Deuces Wild game (16 to 1).

Meanwhile, you’ll see that at the bottom of the pay table, the Deuces Wild game has the advantage. A straight in Deuces Wild pays 2 to 1, compared to even money on the Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table.

High-Volatility Action

These discrepancies on the pay table reinforce the notion of Deuces Wild Elite video poker as a high volatility game. What that means is that you are likely to endure a great range with your bankroll during any given stretch of play. At times, your bankroll could rise significantly above its original level, but it is also just as likely to plummet back down well below its baseline level.

The composition of the Deuces Wild Elite video poker pay table features more high-paying hands than the Deuces Wild game. Thus, it’s easy to realize that you’re going to have more chances at single-hand payoffs that are quite significant.

But what you might not realize is how important that slight discount on the straight means. When you’re playing a game with wild cards, a straight is a relatively easy hand to achieve. This is especially the case when deuces are wild, meaning that there are four wild cards are in play.

As a result, your bankroll could wilt much faster when you’re playing Deuces Wild Elite video poker. That is the negative flipside to its high volatility.

How will that affect your play? Well, if you want to play Deuces Wild Elite video poker for a long time and have a chance at the big payoffs, you might need to make sure that your bankroll is a bit more fortified than usual. That will help you offset the high volatility.

If you don’t boost your bankroll, your risk of ruin rises. The risk of ruin refers to the chance of your losing the entirety of your bankroll. And you obviously don’t want that to come to pass, or else you’ll never get those high-paying winning hands so important to your success playing the game.

But if you do boost your bankroll a bit, you should be able to weather the slumps inherent in Deuces Wild Elite video poker game play. Once you do that, you can hope to take advantage of the outstanding payback percentage offered by the game.

Payback Percentage

Payback percentage measures your expected outcome when playing a given video poker game for a long period of time. It is computed by combining your chances of achieving winning hands with the payback on the pay table for those winning hands.

The important thing to understand about payback percentage is that it won’t necessarily predict your outcome in the short term. Your luck will have more to do that anything else.

As you continue to play the game, however, the luck (or lack thereof) that dictated your early results will begin to even out. Once you’ve played thousands and thousands of hands of Deuces Wild Elite video poker, your outcome will probably look a lot like what the pay table predicts.

Luckily, the payback percentage of 99.5% is solid. Anything over 99% is generally considered to be a good return to player in the video poker world. Even though you’d be losing 0.5%, that is a small house edge to have to endure.

In fact, if you take advantage of rewards offered by the online gambling websites that host Deuces Wild Elite video poker, you could indeed make a profit playing the game. It won’t be easy, and it will take excellent strategy (more on that below), but it is a possibility.

It’s actually somewhat rare for a high-volatility video poker game to actually have a good payback percentage as well. As a result, Deuces Wild Elite video poker is a beneficial game for just about any level of player.

Casual video poker players will probably appreciate the chance to win a lot of money in a short amount of time. And more expert players will enjoy the opportunity to grind out winnings over the long haul when playing Deuces Wild Elite video poker.

Strategy for Deuces Wild Video Poker

The best way to maximize your potential winnings playing Deuces Wild Elite is to play the game with perfect strategy. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can hope to devise on your own.

When you get a five-card deal while playing Deuces Wild Elite, you have to choose which cards to hold and which to discard. There are 32 possible combinations of holds and discards available to you within that five-card deal. Just one of those combinations is the right mathematical play.

On the one hand, your strategy will be made a bit easier by the fact that you’ll always be holding any deuces that you receive on the deal. But then again, you essentially have to learn different sets of plays because of that as well. You have to know what to do with no wild cards, one wild cards, two wild cards, and so on.

Many people make the mistake of simply trying to learn correct strategy through trial and error. They believe that they can play enough hands, either for free or for real money, of a specific game, and they’ll be able to figure out the strategy based on what has happened before.

The problem with that idea is that you can’t base your strategy on a small sample size of results. For example, look at the following deal.

In this deal, there are no wild cards. But you do have some potential winning combinations that are looming. You have a pair of sixes and you also have four diamonds to a flush.

Imagine that you were playing Deuces Wild Elite and received this deal for the first time. You decide on your own to hold the pair of sixes and drop everything else. The draw comes and you receive the following:

The draw went your way and you made a nice winning hand with four of a kind. As a result, the next time you are faced with a similar deal, it’s likely that you’ll choose to hold the pair of sixes again, remembering the success you had the last time.

But anything can happen in a single draw, because it is strictly based on luck. Only after this particular deal has been played hundreds of time will the actual best play reveal itself. It will be the one combination of holds and discards that returns the most payback over this long period of time.

As a matter of fact, when you play this deal in Deuces Wild Elite, the correct play is to hold the four diamonds and discard the six of clubs. That’s based on the probabilities and the payback amounts. In other words, your luck in getting that first hand has set you down a road where you’ll be playing this deal incorrectly going forward, which will hurt your payback percentage.

That’s why we said above that you should get help with learning Deuces Wild Elite strategy. Here are the two methods that we suggest.

Video Poker Training Software

Training software is useful to not only learn strategy, but also get the hang of video poker in general. This makes it the ideal instructional method for beginners. As you learn the strategy for Deuces Wild Elite video poker, you can also learn about bankroll management, betting, and the mechanics of game play.

Video poker training software teaches you the right plays in every situation through repetition. As you play sample hands, you’ll be faced with choices about what to hold and discard. When you make the wrong choice, according to the math, the software will let you know your error.

Strategy Charts

Strategy charts give you a quick fix to learning strategy. But that’s only assuming you’re adept at memorization. Once you have all the information memorized, you can take it with you as you play Deuces Wild Elite video poker.

A strategy chart is a list of different card combinations. These combinations are ranked based on their value to a hand going forward in the draw. By knowing which combinations are most value, you’ll then know which hands you should be holding in each deal.

Deuces Wild Elite Video Poker Pros and Cons

Conclusion on Deuces Wild Elite Video Poker

Deuces Wild Elite video poker pushes wild card play to the extreme with its aggressive pay table. Those rare hands that the wild cards bring into play will be much more lucrative. Just don’t be surprised by the ups and downs of gameplay you have to endure while trying for those high-paying combinations.