How to Play Double Regal Poker Video Poker

Double Regal Poker video poker gives online video poker players a pay table that’s a little bit different what might be expected. The game beefs up payback for four of a kind hands based on the rank. As a result, you get more chances to win big on a single hand than you would in other forms of video poker.

Video poker has steadily become one of the most popular of all casino games. It’s an easy game to learn and incorporates a little bit of strategy. On top of that, most video poker variations provide the kind of payback that is the envy of other one-person casino games like slot machines.

Along the way, video poker has also risen in popularity among online gamblers. Top gambling sites often offer their own versions of video poker games that are found in the casino, adding their slight twists along the way to spice up the action. Double Regal Poker video poker is one of these online-only games that have captivated many players.

In the case of Double Regal Poker video poker, it manages to add something extra by using a unique pay table. Many pay tables in video poker base their payback around the likelihood of making a winning hand. Basically, the hands that are the most difficult to achieve are the ones that pay the most.

For the most part, Double Regal Poker video poker sticks to that structure. But where it differs is in four of a kind payback. Four of a kind is one of the hardest hands in the game to achieve, but it does appear more often during gameplay than a straight flush or royal flush—both of which usually pay more.

In Double Regal Poker video poker, four of a kind hand hands are boosted in payback to a significantly higher level than in other video poker games. You’ll find a pay table that bases the four of a kind, or “quad” paybacks, on which cards are involved. Twos, threes, and fours in quads do very well, and four aces do even better.

Even the lowest-paying four of a kind hands in Double Regal Poker video poker pay back as much as a straight flush. And many quad hands exceed the payback for the straight flush. This is despite the fact that a straight flush is more difficult for the player to achieve when probabilities are considered.

Double Regal Poker video poker is a bit of a bumpy ride. You can definitely expect more significant paybacks in a single hand. But your bankroll drops quickly when those quad hands don’t arrive.

In the following article, we’ll explain all the ins and outs of Double Regal Poker video poker. We’ll talk about how to play the game and what the unique pay table means to the action. In addition, we’ll take a look at strategy and payback percentage for this unique online version of the game.

The Benefits of Video Poker

Of all the games that are found in the casino, video poker might just be the most gambler-friendly of them all. Yet many people pass by the machines on the floor. Maybe it’s because they think it’s just another version of a slot machine, or maybe it’s because they don’t think they’ll understand how to play.

If they would just talk to those who play video poker regularly, they’re likely to find out the truth. Video poker is actually quite simple to play. And it offers the kind of payback that you should be striving for in any casino game.

The same is true for the online version of the game, which is where Double Regal Poker video poker comes into the picture. And when you play online, you can do so without having to worry about someone trying to take your machine.

If you already know how to play video poker and why it is so beneficial, you can move on to where we talk about the specifics of Double Regal Poker video poker. But if you’re new to it all, stop for a second and check out why we recommend video poker to all gamblers:

• Video poker can be learned in a relatively short time. Even someone who has never played a game of poker in their lives can get the hang of it pretty quickly. And those who already have a little bit of a background in poker could get up and running immediately.
• Video poker can be played by a single person. That’s a good thing if you don’t want to have to worry about trying to outplay experts, which is the case with other casino games. It’s also good in that you get completely privacy as you play.
• Video poker comes in a wide variety of different games. In other words, it’s not just one game that you’re forced to play over and over. You can change it up with different pay tables, multiple hand play, wild cards and even special twists.
• Video poker is a game that is based, in part, on strategy. Luck will definitely play a role in whether you win or lose. But so too will the decisions that you make; these decisions give you a little bit of control over the outcome.
• Video poker doesn’t hide anything from you when you play. For example, when you play a slot machine, you’ll never know how often winning spins are set to come up. But probability math can reveal how often winning video poker combinations will arrive, and the pay tables will demonstrate how much you can win from those combinations.
• Video poker pays back very well compared to other casino games. In many cases, easy casino games don’t pay back very well. Yet video poker bucks that trend, with payback in line with strategy-based games like blackjack.
• Video poker is an ideal game to play online. You just have to sign up for a top gambling website and you’ll get pretty much the same experience as you would in the casino, albeit on a smaller screen. And you’ll get to play for real money as well.

We hope that you now understand a little better why video poker ranks so high with discerning gamblers. Now, it’s time to learn how to play the game.

How to Play Video Poker

Step 1: Your Bankroll

If you’re playing on a machine in a casino, your video poker bankroll will come from the money that you insert. But since Double Regal Poker video poker is an online-only version of the game, you’ll have to create a gambling account at a top gambling website. This can come from a credit card or other alternative methods allowed by the site.

Your bankroll will rarely show up in cash on the screen. Most times, it will be converted into units based on the denomination of the game that you’ve chosen to play. For example, if you were playing a 25-cent video poker game, one unit (sometimes called credits or coins) would equal 25 cents, two would equal 50 cents and so on.

Step 2: Your Bet

You may not realize it, but betting is actually part of the strategy in video poker games like Double Regal Poker video poker. If you bet correctly, you actually raise your payback percentage. Do it incorrectly and you will hurt your earning potential.

You will have the opportunity to bet between one and five credits for each hand of Double Regal Poker video poker that you play. Keep in mind that you can only bet in one-credit intervals, which means no bets of, say, 2 ½ credits. It’s up to you if you want to change the wager every hand or keep it the same.

The right strategy is to bet five credits per hand, which is also known as the max bet. Why do you need to do this? Well, it comes down to the payback for the royal flush, which is the rarest and highest-paying hand in all of video poker.

On all other hands, your payback will go up and down in direct proportion to how much you bet. For example, if a winning hand pays off five credits for a one-coin bet, it will pay off 10 credits for a two-coin bet, 15 credits for a three-coin bet, and so on.

But look at the payback for the royal flush in Double Regal Poker video poker, which is pretty standard for video poker games:

• One through four coins wagered: 250 to 1
• Five coins wagered: 800 to 1

In other words, you’re making more than three times as much with the five-credit wager. Even though the royal flush is extremely rare, chances are you’ll get one if you play Double Regal Poker video poker long enough. And you’ll want the highest possible payback in place.

That’s why you should make the max bet every hand. There will even be an icon on the screen to allow you to do that and save time.

If you find that betting five credits per hand is too expensive for you, you should consider lowering your denomination. Doing that will give you the highest payback percentage while also saving your budget a bit.

Step 3: Your Hand

Perhaps the best way to describe the action of video poker is to say that it is a one-person simulation of the card game known as Five-Card Draw. Five-Card Draw Poker deals out five cards to each player, who then try to make the best possible poker hand. To do this, they can drop cards from their hand and pick up new ones from the deck.

But remember that you’re only the only one playing video poker. And all you have to do is form any one of the winning combinations on the pay table. In the case of Double Regal Poker video poker, these are the winning combinations you’ll be seeking:

• Pair of jacks or better
• Two pair
• Three of a kind
• Straight (five cards of consecutive 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)
• Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)

These hands are listed from the ones that will show up most during gameplay, on top, to the ones that will show up the least, on the bottom. This is based on the probabilities involved in a 52-card deck.

As you move down the list, payback gets higher and higher. That fact will drive a lot of your decision-making. There will be times when it makes sense for you to go for a higher-paying hand because the potential reward will be worth the risk of losing the hand by not trying for a safer, lower-paying option.

The Deal

When you make your wager and click on the icon to deal the cards for your Double Regal Poker video poker hand, you’ll see the amount that you’ve wagered get deducted from your bankroll. Five cards will then appear on the screen.

It’s important to understand that these cards appear randomly, thanks to a random number generator within the software. This is the case if you’re playing on a machine or at a machine. Imagine a hidden 52-card deck that is always being shuffled waiting for you to hit the button and receive the top five cards.

In other words, any patterns or trends that occur when you play will be purely coincidence. You have the same chance of getting a royal flush whether you hit one the last hand or haven’t seen one in 100,000 hands. Along the same lines, the chance of you seeing a particular card also remains the same, no matter what has happened before.

The Decision

Once you receive your five cards, the other 47 cards in the deck will go back to be shuffled by the random number generator. This ensures that the draw will be random as well. In the meantime, you have to decide which cards to hold and which cards to discard.

The cards you hold should be ones that you think will help you getting a winning combination, since they’ll be a part of your final hand. As for the cards that you discard, you should make sure they’re not of any use to you. Once you discard them, there won’t be any chance of them being in your final hand.

Any cards that you discard will be replaced by cards from the 47 remaining in the deck. How do you make your decisions about what to hold and discard? These two factors should determine it:

• What chances do you have of forming a winning combination, based on what you have and what is left in the deck?
• How much potential payback is there in the winning combinations that you have a chance of making?

Keep in mind that you can hold all five cards or discard all five cards, in addition to holding some and discarding others. When you’ve played video poker for a while, these decisions will take you a matter of seconds, maybe less. But if you’re just starting out, take a look at the following sample hand to help you learn the process.

Sample Video Poker Decision

Imagine that you receive the following five cards on the screen to start off a hand of Double Regal Poker video poker:

There are many ways you could approach this hand. While there are no winning combinations in this hand as it is constituted, there are several “seeds” of winning hands. You just have to choose the one that you think is the best.
For example:

• If you hold only the pair of threes, you could make winning hands like two pair, three of a kind, a full house, or even four of a kind. As you’ll see when we get to the Double Regal Poker video poker pay table, four 3s is a particularly high-paying combination—a fact which might influence your decision. Choosing this option would mean drawing three new cards.
• If you hold the four spades, you could draw another spade to make a flush. Your chances of doing this is nine (number of spades left in the deck) in 47 (number of cards left in the deck). But you’ll only be drawing one card, which means that the flush is your only possible winning combination.
• If you hold the three, four, and five of spades, you would have an outside chance at drawing a straight flush. But since you’d be drawing two cards, you could still make other winning combinations, like two pair, three of a kind, a straight or a flush. In other words, this choice would be the most flexible of all your options.

As you can see, each choice brings you varying levels of risk and potential reward. This deal is particularly complex when it comes to choices; many others will leave you with much more obvious choices of what to hold and discard. When we get to the strategy section, you’ll learn how you make the right selection for any possible deal.

The Draw

Once you have made your decision, you’ll indicate, by clicking on the icons on the screen, which cards you want to hold, if any. If you leave a card alone, it means that you want it discarded. Once you hit the “deal/draw” button, your decision is final.

The draw will replace any of the cards you’ve discarded and will complete the hand. At that point, if you have formed a winning combination, you’ll see winnings added to your bankroll.

You can start the whole process again by making another bet and starting up another deal. This can continue as long as you have credits in your bankroll.

That pretty much sums up how video poker game play works. Now it’s time to look at Double Regal Poker video poker and the pay table that makes it unique.

Double Regal Poker Video Poker Pay Table

It is always important for you to locate the pay table for any Double Regal Poker video poker that you play. The pay table goes beyond just showing you much you can expect to win for each particular winning combination. It also indirectly points the way to strategy while also letting you know your expected payback.

When you know how much each winning hand pays, you can combine it with the winning probabilities to come up with a payback percentage figure. (Or you can just find video poker calculators which will do the math for you.) In other words, the pay table will tell you how a particular game, such as Double Regal Poker video poker, stacks up to others like it.

Let’s start by taking a look at the Double Regal Poker video poker pay table most often found on gambling websites.

Double Regal Poker Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind (aces)	160	320	480	640	800
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind (any other)	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	5	10	15	20	25
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

How do you read a pay table? Simply connect the rows and the columns. For example, imagine that you bet five coins and ended up with a straight.

Follow the “Straight” row over to the “5 coins” column and you see the number 25. That means you win 25 credits, or coins. Considering that total also includes your initial five-coin wager, it means that your profit is 20 coins (25 minus 5).

Without any context, it can be hard to have any idea of whether this pay table helps or hurts you. Let’s start by taking a look at the most common pay table for Jacks or Better, which is the most popular of all video poker variations:

Jacks or Better Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind	25	50	75	100	125
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

The main difference between the two that you’ll probably notice right off the bat is that the payback for four of a kind hands is parceled out much differently. On the Jacks or Better pay table, all four of a kind hands are paid off at odds of 25 to 1. But when you’re playing Double Regal Poker video poker, it will depend on what card is involved in the four of a kind.

As you can see, four aces pay off best of all in Double Regal Poker video poker. Four twos, threes and fours are next in the quad hierarchy. And even the lowest-paying quad hands (fives through kings) in Double Regal Poker video poker pay twice as much as all four of a kind hands in Jacks or Better and as much as the straight flush.

Where does Jacks or Better come out on top? Look all the way to the bottom of the pay tables and you’ll see the payback for two pair:

• Jacks or Better: 2 to 1
• Double Regal Poker: 1 to 1 (or even-money)

You might not realize why this matters so much. Well, two pair is a common hand in video poker. On average, you can expect to see it show up once every ten hands or so.

As a result, you’ll notice that, when you’re playing Double Regal Poker video poker, your bankroll might sink faster when you don’t get those quads. The even-money payback for two pair just won’t prop it up as much.

Let’s do one more comparison for Double Regal Poker video poker. This is the pay table for a casino video poker game known as Bonus Poker, which has the same structure for four-of-a-kind hands in terms of it being split up by rank.

Bonus Poker Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind (aces)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	40	80	120	160	200
Four of a kind (any other)	20	40	60	80	100
Full house	8	16	24	32	40
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Even though the structure is the same, you can see that offers stronger payback for the four of a kind. It even offers better payback in the middle of the pay table for the full house, flush and the straight. But the Bonus Poker, like the Jacks or Better game, still gives you 2 to 1 for two pair.

In other words, Double Regal Poker video poker is even more volatile than Bonus Poker, which is a pretty volatile game in its own right. Keep in mind that volatility isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you’re someone who wants to win a lot in a short amount of time, you might actually gravitate to high-volatile games.

What you can do to balance out the volatility is to go into the action with a bigger bankroll than normal. That will help to keep you afloat if you hit a slump and aren’t getting the four of a kind payouts that you need. If you can ride out a slump for a longer period of time, it will give you more chances to hit the quads that will give you a needed boost.

Payback Percentage for Double Regal Poker Video Poker

We’ve been talking about volatility, which is a measure of what your bankroll might do from hand to hand in terms of rising and falling. Payback percentage, on the other hand, is what happens when all the volatility evens out over time. This statistic tells you what you can expect your bankroll to look like, on average, from where it started.

It’s that phrase “on average” that many people tend to overlook. They see a quoted payback percentage and think that their results playing the game will be exactly the same. But payback percentage only tends to take hold after you played a specific pay table for a very long period of time.

For example, if you were playing a certain pay table and hit several big winning hands within the first hour of play, you’d probably be looking at a big profit and a skyrocketing payback percentage. By contrast, you’d be looking at a payback percentage of zero if you lost your first 20 hands. Over time, the small sample sizes would all combine, and your own results would start to look like what the payback percentage predicts.

In the case of Double Regal Poker video poker, take a look at the payback percentage:

• 1 through 4 coins wagered: 97.2%
• 5 coins wagered: 97.8%

First of all, this illustrates what we told you about the necessity of betting five coins per hand. Betting less than that in Double Regal Poker video poker will bring down your payback over half a percentage point.

Second, the 97.8% is a bit below ideal. You probably couldn’t expect to make a profit playing Double Regal Poker video poker over the long haul, even with rewards factored into the equation.

Does that mean you should avoid Double Regal Poker video poker entirely? It depends on what you’re seeking from the game.
If you’re somebody who wants the chance at winning a lot in a hurry, Double Regal Poker video poker could be just right for you. The high payback for four of a kind really helps in that department.

But if you want to grind out winnings over the long haul, it might not be ideal. Instead, the Jacks or Better pay table listed above pays back 99.54%. Even though your jackpots will be fewer, you can expect your overall payback to be higher playing that game in the long run than if you were playing Double Regal Poker video poker.

Strategy for Double Regal Poker Video Poker

When it comes to the payback percentage for Double Regal Poker video poker, the only way you can hope to reach it is to play your hands with perfect strategy. For those who are playing video poker for the first time, you might think that sounds odd. You might think that each player can come up with their own strategy and still have a chance at doing as well as anybody else.

But you have to remember that probability math is an important aspect of video poker. For each deal that you get, you’ll have a certain percentage chance for making certain winning combinations on the pay table. When you then factor in the payback for each winning combination, you can come up with an ideal play in every situation.

Like payback percentage, strategy is something that should be considered in the long term. Take a look at the following deal to see what me mean:

The temptation here might be to go for the straight on the draw by dropping one of the sevens and hoping to draw a four. But the problem is that it’s what’s known as an inside straight draw. You could only get the straight with a four, which is a small chance to go for a hand that doesn’t pay a lot.

The correct mathematical play would be to go with the pair of threes. Not only would you leave a lot of different winning combinations in play, but you’ll also leave open the chance for four threes. As we’ve talked about, that is a particularly lucrative hand in Double Regal Poker video poker.

Let’s say that you decide to play the pair of threes, as you should, and the draw takes place as follows:

You didn’t improve the hand. What’s worse, the first card you drew was a four and would have given you the straight had you gone in the other direction.

That doesn’t mean that holding the pair was wrong or that going for the straight was right. It just means that the luck of the draw worked out that way on this one instance. If you were to receive that deal a million times in Double Regal Poker video poker, holding on to the pair of threes would give you the best possible return.

How to Learn Double Regal Poker Video Poker Strategy

The best way to learn strategy for Double Regal Poker video poker is to get some help doing so. Don’t try to do it on your own, because the math is a bit too complicated to figure out in the middle of a video poker session. There are resources that will do the math for you and give you the results.

We suggest you try one of these two methods.

Video Poker Training Software

Video poker training software lets you input the Double Regal Poker video poker pay table and then it incorporates that into the strategy that it offers. You play sample hands of video poker and are faced with choices about what to hold and discard. When you need the help, the software can tell you the ideal play in every situation.

Strategy Charts

Finding a strategy chart on the internet for Double Regal Poker video poker might be a bit tricky, although you could use one for Bonus Poker and get a pretty good idea of what you need to do. Strategy charts rank the card combinations you might get on the deal based on their potential value. When you’ve memorized this information, you’ll be able to tell which cards you should be holding and discarding for each deal you receive.

Double Regal Poker Video Poker Pros and Cons

Conclusion on Double Regal Poker Video Poker

Double Regal Poker video poker puts you in a position where you can reap substantial rewards from four of a kind hands. Payback for mid-priced hands also keeps it very competitive with other similar pay tables. But the low payback for two pair could mean your bankroll will sag at times.