Guide to Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker

Lucky Suit Poker video poker creates a different look for players who are seeking something new out of their video poker action. It does this by creating an entirely different suit known as clovers. That means players will be using a 65-card deck and will have access to many different types of winning hands not available in the basic form of video poker.

For many gambling enthusiasts, video poker stands out as the top game they could hope to play in a casino or as part of a top gambling website. If you’re one of those people, you likely love the fact that video poker is easy to play yet still allows you to use strategy. And you probably also love how video poker machines pay back at a higher level than most other casino games.

What you might not like is if play gets a little stale, especially if all you ever play is Jacks or Better-style video poker. Jacks or Better is the most common form of video poker, which usually pays back even money. From there, the harder it is to make a hand, the more that hand pays off.

While Jacks or Better can be a great way to grind out winnings over time, play can become a bit stale. And the game doesn’t make it easy for you to come up with jackpot-type payouts. As a result, many gamblers go looking for other video poker variations.

What Makes Lucky Suit Poker Different?

You’ll find no shortage of real money video poker games laden with special features and unique pay tables. Lucky Suit Poker video poker might be one of the most creative versions of video poker you can find. With five suits in play and 65 cards, it changes the mathematics and probabilities of normal video poker.

Instead of the usual four suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades), you get access to a fifth suit known as clovers. You can make all the usual hands with clovers involved. And you can even use them as wild cards if the clover in question happens to be the fifth card in a royal flush.

You’ll also find a pay table in place that rewards hands made with clovers a bit more handsomely than with any of the other suits. On top of that, the clovers will put certain hands, like five of a kind, into play. It all makes for a video poker experience unlike any other.

You also have to consider whether or not Lucky Suit Poker video poker gives you a chance to earn money. In the short run, you’ll enjoy many more opportunities to earn big payouts in a single hand. But you also have to consider that, overall, the pay table for the game will not earn you the kind of payback percentage that is generally recommended for serious video poker players.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to understand and play the game known as Lucky Suit Poker video poker. We’ll take a look at basic video poker and compare the Lucky Suit version to it. Finally, we’ll also put a spotlight on the pay table and strategy that accompanies this unique twist on basic video poker.

Why Video Poker Stands Out Among Casino Games

Lucky Suit Poker video poker represents one of many variations of video poker that can be found in both casinos and as part of online gambling sites. Video poker has risen to the point where it’s one of the most popular of all types of casino games. Those who play the game regularly often swear by it and wouldn’t trade it for any of the other games available to them.

Right off the bat, video poker is one of the easiest gambling games to learn. You don’t need to have a background in poker to play, although it might help at the start. Even if you’re a complete novice, it shouldn’t take long to get the hang of it. Only slot machines require less thought to play.

But there’s a key difference there. Video poker, unlike slot machines, is not completely mindless. In fact, better players earn more money over time.

That’s because there’s a strategic element to video poker that slot machines don’t possess. You get the chance to choose which cards you want to hold for your hands and which you want to discard. With slot machines, all you can do is spin the reels and hope.

Video poker also earns points over slot machines because you can use probabilities to tell how often winning hands will appear when you play. When you see a slot machine pay table, you might know how each individual spin will pay off, but you’ll have no idea how often those spins come up during an average session.

In addition, the nature of video poker allows players to be able to figure out how much each specific machine and pay table will offer in terms of payback percentage. The probabilities and payouts will combine to yield that rough percentage. Slot machines offer nothing of the sort because, again, you can’t figure out the probabilities.

If it sounds like video poker holds more in common with table games like blackjack or craps, you’re right about that. But video poker doesn’t require you to deal with casino employees or patrons in a high-pressure environment. You just have to settle at a machine and play at your own pace.

Now, for the bottom-line question—how well do video poker machines pay off? After all, probabilities, ease of play, and strategy is all good and fine. But, as a gambler, you should also be concerned with what you get in return for playing the game.

One additional benefit of video poker is that it gives you the best online experience out of all casino games. There’s no real difference between the way video poker looks on a phone, tablet, or computer screen, and how it looks in a casino.

As you can see, online video poker has a lot to offer. You need to learn how to play if you haven’t already!

With that in mind, let’s walk through how to play video poker in its basic form. Then, we’ll explain the twists and turns contained in Lucky Suit Poker video poker.

How to Play Video Poker

Step 1: Give Yourself a Bankroll

When you hear gamblers talking about their bankroll, they’re just using a fancy term for the money that they’ll be betting in order to potentially win money in return. In video poker, you create your bankroll the minute you put money into a machine. Or, if you’re playing online, your bankroll will come from an account that you fund at the website you’re using.

In either case, you likely won’t see any dollars and cents on your screen when you look for your bankroll. Instead, your bankroll will be rendered in coins or credits. Each coin or credit will equal one unit of the denomination of the machine.

You can find denominations that are as small as a penny, or ones that go for higher stakes, like a dollar. When you create your bankroll, take into consideration your overall gambling budget and the length of time you’re hoping to play. Keep in mind that, once you learn how to play, you can often play several hands of video poker per minute.

As a result, try to create an initial bankroll that will meet your video poker needs. You can go to lower or higher denominations to help you in this effort.

Step 2: Decide on Your Bet

Most video poker machines require you to wager between one and five credits per hand. There are some that let you bet more, but Lucky Suit Poker video poker is not one of those games. The extra feature of the game, i.e. the extra suit and 65 card-deck, comes with the game without the need for an extra wager.

We talked above how video poker allows you to incorporate strategy into play. Well, the first piece of strategy comes into play when you decide on your bet size. You can maximize your potential winnings by betting the maximum amount of five coins, also known as the “max bet” for every single hand.

When you’re playing Lucky Suit Poker video poker and betting one through four coins, the payoff ratio for a royal flush with hearts, diamonds, spades, or clubs sits at 250 to 1. A royal flush with clovers pays back at 1,000 to 1.

But those amounts take a significant jump when you are making the max bet. At five coins played, the clover royal flush pays out at odds of 4,000 to 1. And the royal flush at all other suits returns 800 to 1.

If you feel like betting the maximum amount is a bit too expensive for you, you should consider finding a machine that possesses a lower denomination. In that way, you can get the best rations without having to bet as much money per hand.

Step 3: Play Your Hand

Video poker gameplay essentially mimics the rhythms of Five-Card Draw Poker, a popular home and casino card game. Just as in Five-Card Draw, you get five cards on the deal in video poker. You then draw other cards out of the deck to replace the ones you have decided to discard.

But there’s a big difference. Five-Card Draw, because it’s played by multiple players, requires you to make the best hand at the table or force all other players to fold their bets. Video poker just requires you to make one of the winning hands found on the pay table.

In the case of Lucky Suit Poker video poker, more winning hands come into the picture because of the presence of clovers (represented by clubs in this guide). We’ll talk more about them when we get to the special nature of that game. For this basic discussion though, let’s take a look at common winning video poker hands:

• 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)

As we said above, a pair of jacks or better will come up during gameplay more than any other winning hand. When you move down from that at the top of the list, each successive hand becomes a little more difficult to make. And, from top to bottom on that list, payback will increase.

That sets up the decision-making process in video poker. You’ll have to constantly decide between going for lower-paying hands that you’re sure of and higher-paying hands that are long shots. That decision will hopefully become clearer when you get your deal.

Five cards will appear on your screen. You will have to assess those five cards and look for any combinations similar to the winning combinations listed above. Even if you don’t have any of those winning combos off the bat, you’re not done.

You’ll get a chance to replace as many cards as you wish with new cards drawn from the same deck that provided you with the deal. Keep in mind that you won’t have any chance to get back the cards you’ve discarded on the draw. That’s important to realize if you throw out part of a winning combination in an effort to make a higher-paying hand.

You can keep all five cards if you desire, which would make sense if you have a winning combination on the deal with which you’re happy. Or you can make the exchange of cards on the draw, hoping that the ones you pick up will get you a winning hand.

For example, take a look at the following deal:

On the one hand, this deal already includes a pair of queens. You can keep them and throw everything else back.

If you do that, there’s a chance you can improve the pair to two pair, three of a kind, a full house, or even four of a kind. Even if you don’t, you at least have the pair to get you your money back.

But you could also take the chance and play for a possible flush by keeping the four spades. You can even keep just the four, five, and six of spades and hope for a straight flush.

Once you’ve made your decision about what to keep and what to discard, you will press the buttons corresponding to the cards you wish to hold. You will then press the “Draw” button, at which time your cards will be replaced to complete the hand. The machine will add any winnings to your bankroll.

You can continue playing in this manner as long as you have credits left. Or you can cash out and take your winnings. If you should lose your bankroll, you would have to replenish it before you can continue playing for money.

That’s how basic video poker works. Now, let’s take a look at what the clovers add to Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker.

Putting on the Lucky Suit

When you play Lucky Suit Poker video poker, you’ll be playing with a simulated deck of 65 cards instead of the normal 52. The 13-card difference comes from the inclusion of clovers, a suit created just for this game. The clovers will come in the same ranks ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king) as all the other suits.

This means that the probabilities have been altered somewhat. Let’s take a look at that sample deal that we listed above as an example:

Imagine that you were playing this deal on a normal, Jacks or Better-style video poker machine. Let’s say you were considering going for the flush by keeping all of the spades and discarding the queen of hearts.

You would make that decision knowing that there were 47 cards left in the deck after the deal. And of those 47, nine would be hearts. You’d have a 9 in 47 chance of drawing the flush.

Now, let’s say that same deal came up when you were playing Lucky Suit Poker video poker. Your odds for making that flush would change dramatically.

You would instead be drawing from a deck with 60 cards in it (65 minus the 5 you were dealt). Yet there would still only be nine spades remaining in the deck. Your odds for drawing that flush are 9 in 60.

That’s why you might have to rethink some of your decision-making when you play Lucky Suit Poker video poker. We’ll talk more about this when we get to strategy below.

The clovers do add an interesting element to gameplay. Since the five suits mean there are now five of every rank of card in play, it opens up the possibility of five of a kind. That hand is usually only possible in wild card games.

And speaking of wild cards, Lucky Suit Poker video poker allows you to use a clover as a wild card to complete a royal flush. In this case, only the suit can be wild.

In other words, let’s say that you drew to the following hand:

In this case, you can turn the queen of clovers into the queen of spades. That will give you a kind of wild royal flush.

However, look at the following hand:

In this case, you cannot make a wild royal flush. The four cannot be transformed into the ten that you need, even though it is a clover.

Another key to understanding gameplay in Lucky Suit Poker video poker is that the clovers, when used in any kind of flush, pay more than the other suits. That’s why you should get excited whenever you see them appearing in your hand.

Pay Tables for Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker

When you sit down to play video poker, you should immediately spot the pay table and look it up and down. It will help you determine your strategy in terms of what hands you should be trying to make. And it will also help you understand how this particular version of the game compares to others in terms of payback.

The pay table for Lucky Suit Poker video poker most closely resembles that of a Jacks or Better machine. But the presence of the clovers adds new winning hands to the mix to confuse matters a bit.

Let’s take a look at the most common pay table for Lucky Suit Poker video poker.

Lucky Suit Poker Pay Table

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Clover royal flush	1000	2000	3000	4000	20000
Royal flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Wild royal flush	100	200	300	400	500
Clover straight flush	200	400	600	800	1000
Straight flush	100	200	300	400	500
Five of a kind	200	400	600	800	1000
Four of a kind	30	60	90	120	150
Full house	7	14	21	28	35
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
One pair	1	2	3	4	5

To read the pay table, simply follow the row with your winning hand over to the column with your bet. For example, imagine that you hit a straight while betting coins.

When you follow the “straight” row over to the “5 coins” column, you’ll see that you will win 20 coins. That means that your profit is 15 coins, since you would subtract the amount you bet.

If you’ve never played video poker before, you might not know what to look for when you see this Lucky Suit Poker video poker pay table. Let’s give you some context by showing you the pay table for the highest-paying version of Jacks or Better.

Jacks or Better Pay Table

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
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 a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Let’s do a little comparing. Obviously, the Lucky Suit Poker video poker pay table contains winning hands which don’t exist on the Jacks or Better. They include the clover royal flush, the wild royal flush, five of a kind, the clover straight flush, and the clover flush.

Meanwhile, some of the rarer hands pay off a little more on the Lucky Suit Poker video poker. The straight flush pays 100 to 1 on Lucky Suit compared to 50 to 1 on Jacks or Better. With four of a kind, Lucky Suit wins out 30 to 1 to 10 to 1.

And that’s where the Jacks or Better pay table comes out on top. It yields higher payouts for the full house and the flush (of the non-clover variety). Those are two hands that will come up much more often than any of the jackpot-type hands.

But the real difference-maker is the two pair hand. When you’re playing video poker, two pair will show up on an average of one in every 10 hands. Any discrepancy in pay for that hand will make a big difference.

The Jacks or Better game pays the two pair hand at 2 to 1. But Lucky Suit Poker video poker pays that back at even money, which means you simply get your original bet returned without a profit. That discount will really hurt you during the course of gameplay.

In fact, that discount makes the biggest impact on why Lucky Suit Poker video poker is considered a volatile game, especially when compared to Jacks or Better. How to spot a volatile game? Look for pay tables that pay big on rare hands but drop the pay on common ones.

When you play a volatile video poker machine, you will end up with many more chances at major payouts on single hands. For some people, that is enough to outweigh the fact that you also run the risk of losing your bankroll much faster than if you were playing a low-volatility version of video poker.

Payback Percentage for Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker

When you figure out the probabilities for making every winning hand on a pay table then combine that with the payouts for those winning hands, you will come out with a figure known as a payback percentage. The payback percentage reveals what you can expect to return from a video poker machine on average over time.

Casual players who only play video poker once in a while and do so for recreation more than anything else won’t have to worry about payback percentage too much. That’s because you won’t be playing the game long enough for the payback percentage to really take hold. Luck will impact your outcome more than anything else.

Those who are going to play Lucky Suit Poker video poker, or any other form of video poker for that matter, over a long period of time need to know about the payback percentage. Luck will even out over time, and your results will start to resemble whatever the percentage stages.

For example, the pay table above for Jacks or Better comes in at 99.54%. That’s a highly favorable rate. You might even find some games that pay back over 100%, meaning that the so-called “house edge” is removed and players can expect to make a profit playing the game even without rewards.

Unfortunately, Lucky Suit Poker video poker falls a little short of this threshold. The payback percentage for the pay table above sits at only 96.6%. And that’s with perfect play, a concept we’ll discuss more when we get to strategy.

Again, you might not be too worried about this. The big payouts for rare hands might lure you to Lucky Suit Poker video poker more than the low payback percentages push you away.

But serious players committed to grinding out profits should probably look to another game. Lucky Suit Poker video poker will end up bleeding out your bankroll over the long haul.

Strategy for Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker

When you’re playing video poker, you might think you can figure out the right strategy for you without any help. Well, unless you’re a math genius, you’re probably short-changing yourself.

You see, the concept of strategy in video poker somewhat resembles what we said about payback percentage. If you were to get a certain deal, you might play it incorrectly based on a false estimation of the probabilities and payback amounts. You should ideally be making the play that brings the highest expected value to the deal.

If you don’t, that won’t necessarily hurt you in the short run. Look at the following extreme example of a deal that could conceivably come up during Lucky Suit Poker video poker play:

That’s a pretty obvious choice, right? Keep the four of a kind and get rid of the ace in the hopes that you can somehow draw the last four. And even if you don’t, you’re still sitting pretty.

Let’s imagine, for some crazy reason, you decide instead to drop the four of a kind and go forward with the ace of clovers. You can probably tell that it’s a completely incorrect way to play the hand. Yet the draw comes and you receive:

You backed into the clover royal flush through pure luck. Your incorrect play resulted in a massive payout. It was still the wrong play; it just benefitted from a lucky result.

But if you played that hand a million times, keeping the four of a kind would pay you back more than the other play more than 99% of the time. That’s what you should be striving for in every possible deal. You should be looking for the combination of holds and discards that maximizes the deal’s potential.

Only by learning the right play for each deal can you hit the payback percentage that’s listed. Otherwise, your wrong plays will eventually lower your percentage.

How do you learn all that? Well, Lucky Suit Poker video poker makes it a little more difficult because of its format. The two most common methods of learning video poker strategy, training software and strategy charts, might be less effective.

Video poker training software usually allows you to simulate the play of any video poker pay table while tailoring your instruction to that table. You might have a harder time finding software that lets you create a game that includes the extra cards in the deck and the unique suit that characterize play in Lucky Suit Poker video poker.

You might have better luck finding a strategy chart online that is specific to Lucky Suit Poker video poker if you search. A strategy chart simply lists all of the combinations of cards you might receive on the deal from highest to lowest expected value. When you find the combination in your hand that ranks highest on the list, you’ll know what cards to discard.

If you do find a strategy chart for Lucky Suit Poker video poker, you should memorize it to get the maximum effect. This will allow you to use your knowledge in the casino. It will also allow you to play the game much quicker online than if you were consulting a chart after every hand.

Conclusion on Lucky Suit Poker Video Poker

Lucky Suit Poker video poker keeps you on your toes with the bigger deck and special suit. If you can nail down a strategy, you might find yourself scoring one-time payoffs much higher than other video poker games could provide. But you have to deal with a low payback percentage to get there.