Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

Double Aces and Faces video poker brings players the opportunity to score
jackpot-style payoffs with hands that are somewhat achievable. In most basic
video poker games, the only hand that pays off on that level is the royal flush,
which is extremely rare. Double Aces and Faces video poker gives increased
payoffs for four of a kind hands which, while still not at the level of the
royal flush, can make for impressive profits when hit.

Jacks or Better, the game in which most beginners learn to play
the game, is known for its steady gameplay. Some people, however, might switch
the word “steady” out for the word “boring” when describing Jacks or Better.
That’s because there is little chance during gameplay for gamblers to possibly
get the kind of payoff that might make their session a winner in one stroke.

That is why video poker manufacturers started developing bonus-style games.
These games are played the same way as Jacks or Better, but the pay tables,
which determine how much each winning hand will be paid, are adjusted.

Bonus games usually focus on increasing payoffs for four of a kind hands.
While still rare, a four of a kind is the type of hand that most video poker
players will run across if they sit down and play at a steady pace for a few
hours. If you can hit a couple or more of those during a session of playing
bonus games, you can really boost your profits.

In the case of Double Aces and Faces video poker, which can also be found
under the name Double Jackpot, the best cards with which to score four of a kind
are the jack, queen, king, or ace. That is where the name Aces and Faces
emanates. And the payouts soar even higher if you can get a four of a kind for
one of these cards with a kicker that is also an ace or a face.

Even if your four of a kind hands don’t involve aces or faces, you can still
have the opportunity for big scores in this game with the royal flush or
straight flush. Still, to increase the payouts for the four of a kind hands, the
makers of Double Aces and Faces had to lessen payouts elsewhere on the pay
table. Full house and flush hands will pay you less on this game than they would
in most basic brands of video poker.

In the following article, we’ll talk about how to play Double Aces and Faces
video poker, and what some of the advantages of playing the game are. We’ll also
look at the pay table and how it compares to other similar bonus games. Finally,
we’ll talk about strategy and about what some of the drawbacks of playing this
game might be.

Learning to Play Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

There are some exceptions, but most video poker games are played in the same
manner. You get a deal, look at your cards, decide what cards you want, and then
discard the ones you don’t want so they can be replaced by others. Your goal is
to create one of the winning poker hands, as determined by each particular pay
table, that pay you something in return for your initial wager.

In that way, video poker closely resembles the card poker game known as
five-card draw. And because video poker uses a single simulated deck that is
modeled after the 52-card standard deck that most people use when playing five-card draw, the
probabilities involved are the same.

Double Aces and Faces video poker is one of the games that can be played by
people who know how to play basic video poker without much adjustment. The only
slight considerations that must be made come when it’s time to hold or discard
since you will base those decisions on the pay table for the game. Otherwise,
you’ll play exactly the same as you would Jacks or Better, or any other
garden-variety brand of video poker.

Let’s say you are walking up to a Double Aces and Faces video poker machine
for the first time, or maybe you are encountering it on a gambling website for
the very first time. In any case, here is the step-by-step process that you have
to go through:

1. Insert Money: You will put cash into the machine
   or a redemption ticket with available money if you have one from that
   casino. If you are playing online, you’ll have to build an account with the
   website of your choice. The amount you put in will be divided by the amount
   of the game’s denomination to determine how many credits, or coins, you will
   have to play.
2. Make a Bet: You can bet anywhere from one to
   five coins when playing Double Aces and Faces video poker. If you choose,
   you can move your credits up and down one at a time to get to the desired
   amount. Alternatively, you can bet all five coins at once, a practice that,
   as you’ll see, we highly recommend.
3. Press Deal: Once you hit the “Deal” button, five
   cards will appear on the screen. You have to decide, based on the potential
   of the cards in the deal, which ones you would like to keep and which you’re
   likely to discard. If you choose, you can hold all five cards, or you can
   discard as many of the cards as you’d like, even all five at once.
4. Press Draw: The machine will replace the cards
   that you’ve discarded with ones from the same deck from which you were
   dealt. At this point, the hand is over, and all that’s left to happen is for
   the computer to determine if you’ve won or not. If you have, the appropriate
   amount of credits will be added to your bankroll.
5. Play Again or Quit: Simply follow steps two
   through four to continue playing. Or you can cash out and get a redemption
   ticket if you still have credits left and want to quit. Once you’ve
   exhausted your credits, you need to add more money to continue playing.

As you can tell, it’s not hard to learn to play video poker. Once you learn,
you’ll likely discover the reasons why so many people love to play it. In many
ways, it makes for a better option than both table games and slot machines, even
as it combines elements of both.

It’s similar to slot machines in that you can play it at your own pace
without pressure from others in the casino. And it resembles table games in how
it possesses a strategic element. The holds and discards will have an effect on
whether you win or lose.

Video poker improves upon the slot machine experience because gameplay is
governed by probabilities and, thus, is predictable, but in a good way. With
slot machines, you’ll never have any idea how often a winning spin will show up.
By contrast, you can play video poker and have a good estimate of how often
certain winning hands will come into play.

On top of all that, the payback for video poker machines is usually well
above what you could expect from slots. And the payback is highly competitive
with the most player-friendly table games as well.

As you can see, there is a lot to love in terms of video poker in general.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at Double Aces and Faces video poker and
how it stacks up.

The Double Aces and Faces Video Poker Pay Table

As we stated above, you play Double Aces and Faces video poker in exactly the
same manner as you would most video poker games. Where it diverges is in terms
of the pay table. The pay table is the most important aspect of any video poker
game in terms of what you can expect from it and the strategy that you need to
win it.

The first thing we need to mention about the Double Aces and Faces video
poker pay table is that you might see it under another name. That’s because the
game is sometimes labeled as Double Jackpot. Perhaps that is to distinguish it
from the fact that there is another popular game on the market known as Double
Double Aces and Faces video poker (which we’ll be talking about in a bit).

In any case, Double Aces and Faces video poker, or Double Jackpot, is a bonus
poker game in the most classic sense. By that, we mean that it takes the basic
Jacks or Better pay table and rearranges it in a way that it puts a premium on
four of a kind hands. Most bonus games do this; they differ in terms of how they
award these increased payouts though. Usually, it’s the four of a kind hands
that get the boost.

Double Aces and Faces doesn’t increase the payments for all four of a kind
hands compared to a Jacks or Better game, but it does significantly improve the
payments for the quad hands with ace and face cards. That means that the four of
a kind would involve a jack, queen, king or ace.

Let’s take a look at the most common, highest-paying version of Double Aces
and Faces video poker, and the pay table that accompanies it:

For those who are familiar with a Jacks or Better pay table, you might
immediately notice the difference. Jacks or Better makes no distinction in
payouts depending on which cards are involved with the four of a kind hands;
they are all priced at odds of 25 to 1. Double Aces and Faces video poker boosts
the payouts well above that level for all hands where the four of a kind
involves an ace or a face, while all other quads come in slightly below it at 20
to 1.

In addition, Double Aces and Faces video poker also includes “kicker” hands
into their payouts. A kicker in a four of a kind is the one card out of the five
that is not involved in the quad.

Double Aces and Faces video poker makes you strive for the four of a kind
hands that have high cards involved in any way possible. One good thing about
that is that it makes strategizing a little easier.

Most people tend to keep high cards anyway, because a pair of them pays back
even-money, and because they are the cards involved in a royal flush, the
highest-paying hand by leaps and bounds. As a result, you won’t have to adjust
what you’re trying to do strategy-wise too much to keep those potential four of
a kind aces and faces hands in play.

One other note about the pay table that you should heed: The payout for a
royal flush jumps significantly from one through four coins played to five coins
played. It goes from 250 to 1, to 800 to 1. We told you in the tutorial above
how you should try and bet five coins each and every hand. Now you know why.

Payback Percentages for Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

Because there are binding probabilities in terms of how often certain hands
might arrive, and because there are pay tables explaining how much those hands
pay, anyone can calculate the payback percentage of a given video poker game. A
payback percentage lets you know how much you can expect out of a machine during
an average session.

What the payback percentage does not do is predict how much you might win or
lose in a specific session. You might have a great session full of four of a
kind hands and win a ton of money. Or you might struggle to win a single hand
and lose a bunch.

The payback percentage is concerned with what the machine should yield if it
were played an infinite amount of times. In the case of Double Aces and Faces
video poker, and this pay table, the payback percentage is 99.63%. On average,
$10,000 entered into this machine will end up in a bankroll of $9,963 when every
last cent has been played.

That gives the house an edge of just .37%, a very small amount. Any game with
a payback percentage of over 99% is a solid game for players to take on at the
casino or online.

Double Aces and Faces video poker also manages this with a volatility level
that is only on the medium side. Many bonus games are highly volatile because of
the way they downgrade common hands. That makes it tough for a gambler to
sustain their bankroll without the rare four of a kind, straight flush, or royal
flush hands coming along.

But Double Aces and Faces video poker doesn’t go too far in rewarding the
four of a kind. For contrast, let’s take a look at the similarly named Double
Double Aces and Faces video poker and its pay table:

You can see that the payouts for the four of a kind hands are all jacked up
much higher on this pay table. You also might notice that the payout for a two
pair on this table is just even money. On the Double Aces and Faces video poker
pay table, it’s at 2 to 1.

Two pair is one of the most common winning hands, coming along about once in
every ten hands or so. If you are losing five coins worth of payment once in
every ten hands, it will bring your bankroll down pretty quickly. Of course, in
the Double Double game, a four of a kind hand will put you much further ahead.

The payback percentage for the Double Double bonus game is an impressive
101.14%. But because of the two pair situation, it’s also a much more volatile
game than Double Aces and Faces video poker.

What that means is that casual players who want a long session might be
better off with the Double Aces and Faces video poker version, since it will be
easier to stay afloat in that game without the rare hands. Those who want a
payout that comes out of the blue and makes your whole session in a flash,
regardless of the risks of losing it all to get it, should go for the Double
Double game.

Strategy for Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

When you play any kind of video poker, you should have a strategy in place so
you can make the right decisions along the way. Otherwise, you won’t quite make
those quoted payback percentages over the long haul of playing. They are based
on those gamblers who play the game perfectly.

How do you know if you are playing the game perfectly? Well, every decision
that you make for holding on to certain cards and discarding others has to bring
you the maximum expected pay for that hand. Only one decision can do that out of
all the possibilities.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you were playing Double Aces and Faces
video poker and came upon the following hand:

How would you play it? On the one hand, you have the opportunity at a
possible straight. That would happen if you kept everything but the ace and
received a six on the draw.

On the other hand, you do have an ace as well. Just one more ace would get
you an even-money payout. And, if you should get lucky enough to get a whole
slew of aces on the draw, you get that coveted four of a kind that pays out the
most.

When you break down the probabilities and the pay table, the correct play is
to keep the ace and throw back the other four cards. The reason for this is that
the straight, which pays off at 4 to 1, isn’t worth the slight chance that
you’ll get that six you need to make it. With only four sixes in the deck and 47
cards still remaining, the chances of getting one of those sixes are barely more
than 1 in 12.

Of course, playing the ace, which is the mathematically correct play, doesn’t
guarantee that you’ll win the hand. And it also doesn’t mean that, should you
make the wrong play and go for the straight, you won’t luck out and draw that
six.

What it means is that, if you played that hand over and over again thousands
of times, the payback would be highest if you just held that ace. Very few
people can do the mathematics that makes this clear on the spot in their head.
That is why you should look for assistance when building a strategy for Double
Aces and Faces video poker.

The two best ways to do this? They are:

• Strategy Charts: A video poker strategy chart, which you can
  find online, is made up of all possible combinations of cards that you might
  receive on the deal that could lead to a winning hand. These combinations
  are ranked from strongest to weakest. Start at the top, find your deal when
  it matches one of those combinations, and discard the cards that aren’t
  listed.
• Video Poker Software: This software can
  essentially train you to make the right decisions for every hand. It does
  this by alerting you when you’ve made the wrong decision. Look for software
  that can be bought, as it will give you the most thorough simulation and
  prepare you best for the potential perfect play.

With both of these helpers, the work is already done for you. You just have
to learn or follow it. Using one of these methods will get you very close to the
perfect play that you seek.

Quick Tips for Playing Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

• Play the Maximum Bet: We know we’ve said this
  already, but we can’t stress it enough. You don’t want to be that person who
  gets lucky enough to get a royal flush, but only wins a fraction of the
  potential amount. Find a denomination that will let you bet the maximum
  amount every single hand, just in case that once-in-a-blue-moon hand comes
  along.
• Take Your Time: When people around you in a
  casino are playing fast, you might be under the impression that you have to
  keep up. Remember there is no reward for playing quickly. If you take your
  time and make the right decisions during play, you will eventually be
  awarded, with increased payouts.
• Face Cards Rule: This is the case in most video
  poker games. But the stress on this rule is amplified in Double Aces and
  Faces video poker. If you are going to throw out an ace or a face card in
  this game, it had better be because you have the seeds of an excellent hand
  brewing without it.

Pros and Cons of Playing Double Aces and Faces Video Poker

Conclusion

Whether you call it Double Aces and Faces video poker or Double Jackpot video
poker, this game occupies a nice middle ground between regular Jacks or Better
and more aggressive bonus games. The big payouts are more in play in this one,
whether you’re playing it in a casino or at home on a
top online casino site. But they
aren’t in play so much that you’re going to break the bank just to get through a
round of gameplay when those big hands you seek aren’t forthcoming.