How to Play Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild Video Poker

Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker seems like a mouthful of a name, but the game itself is one that you should be checking out at casinos and online gambling websites. It features gameplay that is essentially the same as the Deuces Wild video poker game. But its pay table is one that is very beneficial to players and, considering that it can be found more easily than full-pay Deuces Wild, it makes for an excellent way to seek out your video poker action.

Video poker is a game that is beloved by millions who play it either in casinos or online. It is a simple game to learn and yet it provides the challenge of decision-making, all while providing paybacks that easily out do slot machines. But the most common form of video poker game, also known as Jacks or Better, can frustrate some players who like the idea of getting rare hands and scoring big payouts, both of which are hard to achieve with Jacks or Better.

Wild card games are a solution to that problem. When playing with wild cards, the player has much more of a chance to hit big hands like four of a kind or even a royal flush, and it even creates the new winning hand of five of a kind. It does this because wild cards can be turned into any card that makes the most formidable winning hand.

Deuces Wild is the most common form of wild card game in the world of video poker. It allows any of the twos in the deck to be turned into wild cards (4 out of 52), and that, in turn, means that you have a great chance of achieving big hands and top payouts.

What Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker adds to the equation is a slightly different twist on the common Deuces Wild pay table. In particular, it beefs up the pay for several winning hands from even the full-pay version of Deuces Wild. And since it is extremely hard to find full-pay Deuces Wild machines, the Not So Ugly Ducks version of the game is often the most lucrative one that you’ll be able to find.

In the case of Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker and other wild card games, you have to realize that some of the hands that pay off on Jacks or Better will not pay off on this game. That’s because hands like a pair or two pair are much easier to achieve with wild cards. As a result, you have to recalibrate your strategy and aim toward the big hands on the pay table to maximize your potential winnings.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the game known as Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker. We’ll explain how to play basic video poker, how the wild cards affect gameplay, and what the pay tables and payback percentages look like. Finally, we’ll give you an idea of how learning the right strategy can make a huge difference in terms of your winnings at these machines.

Basic Video Poker Gameplay

When it comes to the different games that you can play in a casino, you might not think of video poker as being one of the best. It doesn’t have the glamorous reputation of games like poker or roulette. And it doesn’t necessarily give the feeling of get-rich-quick that many people feel that slot machines deliver.

Yet when you stack it all up, video poker games like Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild might just be the very best games that you can play in a casino. That is factoring in everything from ease of play through the level of challenge all the way to payback. In fact, it takes many of the best elements of slot machines and table games and combines them for a unique experience.

People think of video poker along the same lines as slot machines because you can find them both in the same part of the casino. But in actuality, the two entertainments are far from similar, with video poker coming out on top in just about every single way. Other than the fact that they are played by one person at a machine without the hassle of others, video poker and slot machines don’t have much in common.

For example, slot machines are generally random. You can’t use any strategy when playing them, all you can do is spin and hope. And there is no way of knowing either how often you can expect winning spins to happen or what you can expect to get paid back from a particular machine on average.

Video poker is just the opposite of that. First of all, you get a chance to apply strategy. That means that you actually have an impact over whether you will win or lose any given hand.

On top of that, you will be able to calculate your approximate chances of achieving winning hands. That’s because video poker’s outcomes are limited to what can happen from a deck of 52 playing cards. When you combine the probabilities with the payback amounts listed on the pay table, you can also learn the payback percentage for each video poker game that you play.

As far as those paybacks, you also need to know that they, on average, are much higher than what you can expect from slot machines. In fact, the best video poker machines pay you back around the same level as some of the most competitive video poker machines. And, as we mentioned above, you can get that payback without having to deal with other casino patrons or employees as would be the case with table games.

Video poker is an extremely easy game to learn how to play. And there are so many different variations, including Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker. You can find a machine that suits your budget and your tolerance for risk.

We just said that video poker is easy to learn, so let’s show you easy by giving you a quick tutorial that will get you up and running. First, we’ll just show you how to play a hand of basic video poker. Once you have that down, we can talk about the wild card elements of Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker.

Step 1: Establish a Bankroll

The bankroll is just a term used in gambling for the money that you will be putting at stake in order to win some back. When playing video poker, you will establish your bankroll by inserting money or a redemption ticket with monetary credit into the machine. If you are playing online, you’ll have to create an account and fund it to start play.

When you put in your money, it will register as credits or coins. How many credits will depend upon the denomination of the machine you are playing. For example, if you put in $10 and the denomination is a quarter, you will receive 40 credits to start, since 10 divided by .25 equals 40.

Obviously, your bankroll will be determined by your budget. But you should keep in mind that video poker, once you learn to play it, can move at a quick pace. Knowing that, try to manage your bankroll so that you can play for as long as you’d like knowing that you can usually play several hands per minute.

Step 2: Making a Bet

You might not realize it, but your first strategic decision when playing video poker is in terms of how much you want to bet. Video poker payoffs rise in proportion to the bet that you make until you get to a certain level. Once you move from four to five coins (the maximum wager), the proportion rises much higher in the favor of the bettor.

This phenomenon comes into play with the royal flush hand, which is the hardest to achieve in all of video poker and also the most lucrative. When you bet one through four coins, the royal flush pays off 250 to 1. But when you bet five coins, that payoff jumps to 800 to 1.

It’s understandable if your budget might not be able to handle your betting five credits on every hand. But you will be kicking yourself if you do get lucky enough to score a royal flush while betting less than the max. That’s why, if you can’t afford the max bet at the denomination you’re playing, you should consider finding a less expensive machine.

Step 3: Playing a Hand

When you play video poker, you are essentially playing a simulated version of the card game known as five card draw poker. In that game, players receive five cards on the deal. They can then throw out cards from that hand and draw new ones in an effort to make the best possible winning hand.

When playing five card draw against others, you have to try to make the best hand out of everybody. Since there are multiple betting rounds, players try to bluff their way into winning the hand by betting a lot and forcing others to fold. But video poker just requires you to make one of the winning hands on the pay table, without having to worry about bluffing or anything like that.

What constitutes a winning hand? Well, remember that we’re talking about a wild card game in Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker, which means that the pay table will be adjusted from what it takes to win in a non-wild card game like Jacks or Better. Here are the hands that will pay off in this game, from easiest to achieve (and lowest-paying) to most difficult to achieve (and highest-paying):

• 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)

When you receive the five-card deal on the screen of your machine, you will immediately assess it for the potential to make one of these hands. You might even have a winning hand right off the bat. If not, you still have the chance to improve the hand on the draw.

The draw is when you have the chance to use a strategy. Determine which hands you have the potential to make, and balance that out by considering the potential winnings you can make if you achieve those hands. It’s a matter of trying to balance out the risk by the time the hand is finished.

Let’s take a look at a sample deal to see how this process works. Imagine that you received the following five cards:

There aren’t any winning combinations right off the bat in this hand, at least not in the Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker pay table. But you can see that there are potentially some combinations that can easily be turned into winning hands with the right cards on the draw. You’ll have to decide which way you should lean.

For example, you could keep the pair of jacks in hopes that you can improve it to three of a kind, a full house, four of a kind, or even five of a kind with the wild card. You could keep everything but one of the jacks, which would mean that you would just need a queen to make a straight. If you really want to go for the gusto, you can keep the ten, jack, and king of hearts, which would leave you just two cards short of a potential flush, straight flush, or even royal flush.

These are the kinds of decisions you face when you play video poker. In some cases, the decisions will be easier and you’ll make them on the fly. If you want to know how to make the correct choices on these types of hands, check out the section on strategy below.

In any case, once you make your choice, you will press the buttons right below the cards that you wish to hold (you can keep all five cards if you wish). Once you do that, the draw will appear on your screen, and the hand will be over. At that point, any winnings will be added to the credits that you have.

That’s how you play a hand of video poker. To keep playing, you can just keep repeating steps two and three over and over as long as you have credits remaining. You can also cash out whatever credits you have at any point.

Video poker is that simple. You can probably get a good understanding of it once you play a couple hands. Now that we have that under control, we can talk about playing with wild cards in the deck, because that is how it works with Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker.

Playing Video Poker With Wild Cards

If you’ve ever played some kind of poker at home, you might be familiar with the concept. If not, we’ll explain it now as it pertains to Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker.

Basically, a wild card can be turned into any card in the deck, one that helps your hand the most.

In the case of Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker, the four wild cards in the deck are the twos. Having four wild cards gives you a much better chance to receive one than the other major wild card game in the world of video poker, known as Joker Poker. With Joker Poker, there is just one wild card in the deck, the Joker, and it is an extra card in the deck, meaning that you have just a one in 53 chance of receiving it.

Let’s take a look at a sample deal that you might receive in Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker and see how the wild cards come into play:

Normally, this hand wouldn’t be all that advantageous in a normal game of video poker, although you do have three cards to a straight flush. But remember that the two will be turned into whatever card makes your hand most advantageous. You won’t actually know what this is until the draw, but you can speculate when you get the deal so you can decide on your holds and discards.

For example, you could imagine this card as either the three or seven of hearts. That would give you four cards to a straight flush. You would have seven possible outs to get this hand: the three, four, eight, or nine of hearts, or any of the remaining twos in the deck.

Another possibility would be to go with the pair of fives and the wild card. That would give you, at least, three of a kind, which is already a winning hand in Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker. You could improve it in many different ways on the draw, possibly to a full house, four of a kind, or even five of a kind.

Remember that the card will be transformed based on the draw. Let’s say that you went with the latter choice, holding on to the wild card, the five of spades, and the five of hearts. Imagine you received this on the draw:

In this case, the best hand that you can make with the help of the wild card is a full house. Essentially, the two will be changed into a five or an eight. It doesn’t really matter which, since, in both cases, it will create a full house.

You will also notice that there is a distinction between a royal flush and a wild royal flush in the list of winning hands. Here is how the two of them might look:

Royal Flush:

Wild Royal Flush:

As you can see, the wild royal flush isn’t possible without the help of the wild cards. The natural royal flush requires no wild cards. All other winning hands in Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker pay the same whether they were made with wild cards or not.

During Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker, you can actually have two separate winning hands after the draw. The machine will always credit you with the highest-paying hands. For example, consider the following hand:

Considering the makeup of that hand, you could pretty much change anything with the wild cards, including five of a kind or a wild royal flush. But the highest-paying version of that hand is four of the twos. The machine will automatically credit you with having that hand.

Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild Video Poker Pay Tables
What sets Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker apart from other Deuces Wild games is its pay table. It pays off some hands at a higher rate than a traditional Deuces Wild game. Let’s take a look at the pay table for a full-pay version of Deuces Wild to start:

Full-Pay 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	15	30	45	60	75
Straight flush	9	18	27	36	45
Four of a kind	5	10	15	20	25
Full house	3	6	9	12	15
Flush	2	4	6	8	10
Straight	2	4	6	8	10
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

Now, let’s take a look at the pay table for Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker:

Not So Ugly Ducks 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

As you can see, the Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker pay table offers increased payoffs on four hands: five of a kind, straight flush, full house, and flush. The Deuces Wild pay table has an edge in the four of a kind hands.

Surprisingly, the Deuces Wild pay table above actually features a higher payback percentage than the Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker pay table. That’s because of how frequently a four of a kind hand will come up in wild card play. That little boost will actually outweigh all of the advantages that the other pay table offers.

The interesting thing about it is that Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker is a much easier game to find than a full-pay Deuces Wild. And its payback percentage of approximately 99.7% is extremely competitive. Any payback percentage in video poker over 99% is excellent, because casino rewards will help you make up the average 1% loss that is ingrained in the pay tables.

You might be wondering where the game got the name Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker. Well, it turns out there is a pay table that goes by the name Ugly Ducks. Let’s take a look:

Ugly Ducks 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	15	30	45	60	75
Straight flush	9	18	27	36	45
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

You can see that this pay table falls below the Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker one in terms of the five of a kind and straight flush hand. That brings the payback percentage of this game down below that 99% mark that we recommend.

Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild Video Poker Strategy

Any payback percentages that we quote in this article are only really achievable by those who play the game with expert strategy. By that, we mean that they are making the mathematically correct decision about which cards to hold and which to discard for each and every hand that they play. That might not be as easy as you might think.

For example, consider the following deal in Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker:

As constituted, this hand is a straight, which will pay you off at 2 to 1. But the mathematically correct play here is to actually drop the seven of hearts in an effort to make a flush or, with any luck, a straight flush. For a novice player, the notion of throwing out a winning hand might seem odd, but it is the play that gives the hand its highest expected value.

If you were to play this hand just a few times, you might end up failing to get another flush on the draw, meaning that you gave up the winning hand for nothing. But if you played the hand an infinite amount of times, you would get enough of the flushes and royal flushes to make the hand as profitable as it can possibly be. Luck is eventually factored out and the probabilities take over.

How can you learn how to come up with the correct plays each and every single time? Well, there are two methods which we highly recommend. Both will take some time before you can really get everything down pat, but if you do your homework, you can achieve perfect play on Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker in this manner.

Video Poker Strategy Charts

A strategy chart lists all the possible combinations of cards that you might receive on the deal during a game of Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker. It then ranks the combinations in terms of their expected value. Using the above hand, you would notice two listings saying something like:

• One wild card making four to a straight flush
• One wild card making straight

The chart goes from most lucrative expected value to least, so you know the one on top is the way to go. It will let you know to throw out the cards that don’t fit in. To use a strategy chart properly, you have to memorize it.

Video Poker Trainers

Video poker trainers are software that can be tailored to any pay table that you play. You would purchase the software and input all the values for a Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker pay table. The software then customizes its instruction to this pay table.

When you use the software, you will play simulated hands that look just like what you would see in a casino or if playing online. If you make a decision on a hold and discard that is mathematically incorrect, the software will alert you. By doing this for a long period of time, you will learn the right choices without even having to think about it.

Pros and Cons of Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild Video Poker

Final Words on Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild Video Poker

As far as wild card games go, Not So Ugly Ducks Deuces Wild video poker ranks pretty high, whether you play at a real money online casino or at your favorite land-based casino. You are getting all the benefits of Deuces Wild and a pay table that rewards you handsomely. Make sure to get your strategy in order to really maximize your winnings for this exciting game.