Draw 6 Video Poker

Draw 6 Poker video poker creates thrills for those who play it with an exciting twist that requires no extra wager. When a player receives three of a kind or certain full house combinations on the deal, they get to draw a sixth card instead of the usual five. This sixth card boosts the chances for massive hands and the big payouts that go along with them.

For many people, video poker stands as the best game that you can play at a casino or online. You can play at your own pace without any hassles like you would a slot machine. But you also get to apply strategy and have some control over the outcome of the game as you would if you were playing a table game.

Basic video poker, also known as Jacks or Better, grew out of a simulated form of Five-Card Draw poker. In Five-Card Draw, players try to make the best hand out of everyone at the table from a five-card deal and a draw where you get to replace certain cards in your hand.

Video poker keeps that same format. But players only need to create a winning hand as determined by the pay table to walk away with a profit. It’s just you against the machine.

While the basic form of video poker, Jacks or Better, remains very popular, many other forms of the game have sprung up. Video poker players like variety. As a result, there are all kinds of variations, like Draw 6 Poker video poker.

Some of these variations tinker with the pay table, adding payback to certain rare hands at the expense of more common hands. These so-called “bonus” games give players a better chance at a giant payout in one fell swoop.

There are other video poker games which actually have formats that are slightly different than the basic deal-draw structure. These games often require players to make an extra bet above the usual to unlock whatever the feature might be. While these types of games can be exciting, they can also be very expensive and beyond the budget of casual players.

Draw 6 Poker video poker has an extra feature. But it doesn’t require you to make an extra bet to take advantage of it. You just need to get lucky with specific deals.

As for how exactly the extra feature works, you might be able to figure it out from the name of the game. Draw 6 Poker video poker allows you to draw a sixth card, one more than usual. This occurs when you receive either three of a kind or specific full house combinations on the deal.

This extra feature really pays off because it only comes into play on hands where the potential for big winnings is already in place.

But Draw 6 Poker video poker doesn’t just let you take advantage of this without taking something away as well. In the mid-range of the pay tables of this game, payback is often slightly reduced from what you could expect from typical Bonus Poker pay tables. As a result, payback percentages remain moderate even as your chances for big winnings in a hurry increase.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Draw 6 Poker video poker. We’ll go over basic video poker for the newcomers, then we’ll talk about how the Draw 6 twist works. Finally, we’ll review this game in terms of it pay tables, payback percentages, and strategy.

Video Poker Benefits

Video poker might not stand out as anything special when you walk into a casino for the first time. It doesn’t have crazy themed tie-ins or wild designs like many of the top slot machines do. And the video poker section isn’t usually accompanied by a frenzy of excitement like the table games sections often are.

On the one hand, video poker resembles slot machines because it’s just you and the machine. There are no hassles from other casino patrons or employees. You can sit at a machine and remain unbothered by all the commotion around you, concentrating on winning and nothing else.

That makes video poker, including Draw 6 Poker video poker, preferable to table games. When playing table games in person, you need to know exactly what you’re doing in terms of gameplay and protocol. If you don’t, it can turn into a very uncomfortable situation.

But video poker also leaves slot machines behind in many ways. Slot machines require no skill whatsoever from the player. Video poker allows you to have a say in the outcome with your ability to strategize.

Slot machines also don’t give any indication of what outcomes you can expect. You have no way of knowing how often the winning spins might come around on average during play. And you have no way of figuring out if the machine you’re playing is any more or less lucrative than all the other slot machines in the casino.

Video poker doesn’t leave you in the dark like that. Your ability to make winning hands is primarily based on the probabilities found in the 52 cards in the deck.

Those probabilities don’t change and can be accurately estimated. They’ll give you a firm idea of how often you might get a straight, four of a kind, or any other winning hand on the pay table.

Video poker, including Draw 6 Poker video poker, also clues you in as to how much you can expect from the machine. Simply combine the probabilities with the amounts that can be won on the pay table. Or look up the machine online to find out what your estimated average payback percentage will be.

On the whole, those payback percentages will be much higher than what slot machines can give you. In fact, video poker payback percentages can often compete with those of table games.

One other feather in the cap of video poker: how well the game translates to online play. It’s easy to simulate the video poker experience on small screens like those on phones or tablets. You can play it anywhere and never miss out on anything surrounding gameplay.

It’s no wonder why video poker is so loved by those who play it. If you haven’t played it yourself, let’s talk about how to play the game at its most basic level. Then, we can move on to what happens when you play Draw 6 Poker video poker.

Video Poker Basics

Step 1: Your Bankroll

Your bankroll comes from the money that you put into the machine. This allows you to win money since you’ll also be putting money at stake. When playing online, your bankroll will come when you fund your account.

Your bankroll in Draw 6 Poker video poker won’t be registered in the machine in terms of dollars and cents. Instead, you’ll see it show up on the machine as credits or coins. Each credit or coin will be equal to the value of one unit of the machine’s denomination.

Some video poker machines let you choose between denominations that are available on them. Others have the denomination set. Denominations can run from smaller amounts like a nickel to more significant amounts like a dollar.

If you want to figure out how many credits you’ll have to play, simply divide the amount of money you’ve inserted by the denomination. For example, one dollar inserted in a nickel machine will get you 20 credits (1 divided by .05 equals 20).

Step 2: Your Bet

For every hand that you play on most video poker machines, including Draw 6 Poker video poker, you’ll have to bet at least one credit. You can raise that bet in increments of one all the way to five credits per hand. If you’d like, you can change your bet for every single hand, although we wouldn’t recommend that.

To keep it simple and maximize your potential winnings, we recommend you bet five coins every single hand. This is also known as the max bet, and most video poker machines will have a “Max Bet” button to shorthand it for you. You can just hit that button every hand to make life easy and play quicker.

Why is it more beneficial for you to bet five credits instead of a lesser amount? That answer comes down to if and when you’re lucky enough to attain a royal flush, which is the hardest hand to achieve in video poker and also pays the most.

If you hit a royal flush in Draw 6 Poker video poker and have played anywhere from one to four coins, your payout will come at odds of 250 to 1. This is not bad at all.

But it’s nothing compared to what you get if you hit the royal flush after the max bet of five. A royal flush at five coins wagered comes in at 800 to 1.

If you find that might be too expensive for you, we suggest you find a game with a lower denomination. However, if you insist on playing less than the max, don’t base your bet on what you think might happen from hand to hand.

In other words, don’t bet more because you’ve lost several hands in a row and think you’re due for a win. Or don’t bet less on one hand because you’ve hit a couple hands in a row and think you’re bound to lose the next hand in Draw 6 Poker video poker.

Video poker doesn’t work that way. Digital cards are constantly being shuffled within the machine and are dealt from the top the moment that you hit the “Deal” or “Draw” button on the machine. As a result, your chances of winning or losing a given hand before the deal never changes based on what has happened on the machine prior to that hand.

Step 3: Your Hand

You will be dealt five cards that appear on the screen the moment that you have made your bet and hit “Deal.” These five cards will come from that simulated 52-card deck within the machine. Once you receive these cards, you’ll look to see how they match up with some of the winning combinations as determined by the pay table.

Most pay tables are similar in what they reward as winning hands. The main exception comes in wild card games, where the threshold for a winning hand is higher because the wild cards benefit the players so much. Since Draw 6 Poker video poker doesn’t include wild cards, they pretty much pay back on the most common winning hands in video poker, which are:

• 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)

Looking at this list, the winning combinations at the top are the easiest to achieve and come up most often in video poker gameplay. The ones at the bottom are rarely achieved. In terms of payouts, the hands at the top pay out the least, and payback increases as you go down the list.

Your goal is to form one of these winning hands in Draw 6 Poker video poker. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have a winning combination right off the bat. But even if you don’t, you can still find your way to a winning hand on the draw.

Before the draw, you get to choose which cards in the deal you want to keep and which you think you can do without. You will base this decision on the probabilities that you have of reaching winning hands based on your deal. And you will also consider the potential winnings from the hands you might make.

Keep in mind, you can keep all of your cards in Draw 6 Poker video poker if you have a winning hand right off the bat that you don’t think you can improve. Or you can throw them all back if you don’t think any of them have any use to you. Most often, you will hold on to some and throw others back.

Once you make this decision, the draw round will take place. The cards that you’ve kept will stay on the screen, while the ones you’ve discarded will be replaced.

Keep in mind that the new cards you receive on the draw will come from the deck which dealt you the original five. That means you’re only drawing from 47 cards instead of 52. And it also means you don’t have any chance of getting back a card that you’ve just discarded.

Once the draw has taken place, your hand is over. Any winnings will be added to your total. If you want to keep playing, you can, as long as there are credits left in the machine or you can cash out at any time.

That’s how video poker works. Pretty simple, right? Even if it does sound a bit confusing on paper, by playing a few hands, it will become second nature.

Of course, that’s just the basic version of the game to give you a foundation. We’re here to tell you about Draw 6 Poker video poker, and the fascinating twist that can really amp up your winnings.

Drawing the Sixth Card

We just told you about the fact that normal video poker ends up with you having a hand of five cards. But Draw 6 Poker video poker gives you the occasional chance to end up with six in your hand when all is said and done.

What’s the advantage of that? Well, a sixth card gives you one more chance to improve upon your hand that a five-card draw doesn’t allow. As a result, you have one more chance of receiving a card that either makes a winning combination or adds to the one you already have.

Let’s talk about how this works. Remember that it requires no extra bet for you to get the sixth card, which is a good thing. But the extra card only comes if you receive certain cards on the deal.

All deals which result in three of a kind will earn you the extra card in Draw 6 Poker video poker. In addition, certain full house hands will also get you the sixth card, depending on which pay table you are using.

Here are the full house hands that will get the sixth card on the draw:

• Bonus Poker: Full house with three aces
• Double Bonus Poker: Full house with three aces, twos, threes, or fours
• Double Double Bonus Poker: Any full house

Let’s see how all this might play out. Imagine you’re playing Draw 6 Poker video poker on a Bonus Poker pay table and you receive the following deal:

You have the three of a kind necessary to activate the sixth card on the draw. The obvious play here is to hold on to the fours and drop the other two cards.

Here is how the draw might work:

Had you played that hand on a normal video poker machine, you would have had to live with three of a kind, since the first two cards on the draw didn’t help you out at all. But with Draw 6 Poker video poker, you made your four of a kind, which pays you at 40 to 1.

Let’s take a look at another sample deal, this time on a Double Double Bonus pay table:

Since this is a Double Double Bonus pay table on a Draw 6 Poker video poker, we know that all full house hands let you get a sixth card on the draw. Let’s see what might transpire:

That gives you four of a kind. Even though you also technically have a full house, the four of a kind overrides it. The machine will always pay you for the most lucrative part of your hand, which in this case is a 50 to 1 payout on the four of a kind.

As you might be able to tell with the way that Draw 6 Poker video poker is structured, you have a greatly increased chance of getting four of a kind. The good news is, as you’re about to see as we take a look at pay tables, is that four of a kind hands are richly rewarded in this game.

Pay Tables for Draw 6 Poker Video Poker

At its most basic level, a pay table tells you how much you will make for each winning hand in the game. But it does much more than that, as expert video poker players realize.

On the one hand, it shows you the way you should direct your strategy. If you see that certain hands pay off much higher than others, you know that you should be trying to achieve those hands.

Pay tables also reveal how much you can expect in payback. You can compare the payback amounts for certain winning hands among different video poker games to see how they stack up. Or you can input the pay table into a video poker calculator to see how much payback percentage you will be expected to receive.

The pay tables for Draw 6 Poker video poker loosely mimic Bonus Poker pay tables. Four of a kind hands pay off especially well. As you go down the pay tables, however, you’ll notice that the payouts are lacking compared to other games similar to them.

Let’s take a look at three of the most popular pay tables available in Draw 6 Poker video poker:

Bonus Poker

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coin	3 Coin	4 Coin	5 Coin
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, 4s)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a Kind (Any Other)	25	50	75	100	125
Full House	6	12	18	24	30
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5

Double Bonus Poker

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coin	3 Coin	4 Coin	5 Coin
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, 4s)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a Kind (Any Other)	50	100	150	200	250
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	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or Better	1	2	3	4	5

Double Double Bonus Poker

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coin	3 Coin	4 Coin	5 Coin
Royal Flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Straight Flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a Kind (with any 2, 3, 4)	400	800	1200	1600	2000
Four 2s, 3s, 4s (with any Ace, 2, 3, 4)	160	320	460	640	800
Four Aces	160	320	460	640	800
Four 2s, 3s, 4s	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5s through Kings	50	100	150	200	250
Full House	6	12	18	24	30
Flush	4	8	12	16	20
Straight	3	6	9	12	15
Three of a Kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two Pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Pair of Jacks+	1	2	3	4	5

What you have to realize about these pay tables is that, as you go down from the basic Bonus Poker all the way to Double Double Bonus, the games get more and more volatile. The good news about volatile video poker games is that they offer you more chances to score jackpot-style payouts than other games. But they also do a number on your bankroll much quicker than basic video poker games when you don’t get those big payoffs.

You just need to decide if you’re okay with the tradeoff. If you’re looking to sit at a machine for a long time after starting with a small bankroll, Draw 6 Poker video poker probably won’t be right for you.

But if you want to score big quickly, Draw 6 Poker video poker gives you those chances as long as you don’t mind the possibility of losing your bankroll in a hurry.

Payback Percentages for Draw 6 Poker Video Poker

Payback percentage represents another key metric that serious video poker players should learn. If you play a video poker machine with a specific pay table and specific rules over a long period of time, the probabilities will determine your outcome. That is, as long as you’re playing the game at an expert level, which we’ll get to later on.

If you’re a casual video poker player, you don’t need to worry about payback percentage so much. Your shorter sessions will be governed by luck more than anything else.

But if you really want to make a pastime out of video poker and hope to win your money back and more, you have to be able to compare one machine to another. And payback percentage is the best way to do that.

If we said that a payback percentage for a certain variation like Draw 6 Poker video poker is 99%, that means you’ll get $99 back for every $100 that you bet in the machine on average. That last phrase, “on average,” really means a lot.

You could play one session where you hit four of a kind three times in the first four hands. That will boost your winning percentage well above 100%. Or you could lose 10 hands in a row, in which case your percentage is zero.

Over time, however, luck will even out and you’ll end up at 99%. That means losses of 1%, which is not the end of the world.

You can easily make up that loss of 1% by getting rewards from casinos or top online gambling websites for loyalty and heavy play. That will put you at or even above 100%. For that reason, we recommend choosing games where the payback is over that 99% level if you want to be a serious layer.

Draw 6 Poker video poker doesn’t quite meet that threshold. The reduced payback for the common hands bring the percentages down for the above pay tables, with the best sitting at barely over 98%.

While that means you might end up losing money if you play Draw 6 Poker video poker for the short haul, it doesn’t discount you from playing it on occasion. This is especially true if you’re looking for the quick, significant score. The sixth card twist certainly puts those four of a kind hands in play like few other games.

Strategy for Draw 6 Poker Video Poker

You don’t really need to learn anything new when learning strategy for Draw 6 Poker video poker. Just play the pay tables as you always would.

The twist doesn’t require you to come up with different ways to play your hands. After all, you know you’re going to be holding on to three of a kind or a full house anyway.

That just means you have to learn basic video poker strategy. As we said above, the only way you can reach the maximum payback percentage for each pay table is to play expertly. By that, we mean that you have to make the right decisions for every possible deal you receive.

What do we mean by the right decisions? We mean the decisions that bring the highest expected values to each possible hand.

That might sound like a daunting prospect, especially if you’re not a math whiz who can figure out such things in the spur of the moment.

Luckily, you can find some resources to help you out in your quest to learn perfect strategy for whichever pay table within the Draw 6 Poker video poker that you choose. We highly recommend these two in particular.

Video Poker Software Trainers

By using these trainers, you can simulate gameplay and even manage a bankroll as if you were playing for real money. The real advantage comes when you are playing and make an incorrect choice about which cards to hold and which to discard.

At this point, the software will alert you to your mistake and let you know what the right choices should have been. This way, you can learn perfect play through simple repetition.

Strategy Charts

Strategy charts can be found online for most major pay tables, including the ones that are listed above. These charts list the best possible combinations of cards that you can receive on the deal all the way down to the worst for Draw 6 Poker video poker.

When you compare the cards in your hand to the ones on the chart, you’ll know which ones aren’t essential and can therefore be discarded. By memorizing strategy charts for the pay table that you’re playing, you’ll know immediately what cards are worth keeping in any deal that you receive.

Conclusion on Draw 6 Video Poker

Draw 6 Poker video poker lets you get one more card than normal for the best possible hand. You’ll be scoring more four of a kind hands than you’ve ever managed before. Just don’t be discouraged if your bankroll falls a little bit in between those quad hands.