Guide to Playing Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker

Stack ‘em Poker video poker provides one of the most fascinating twists in the world of video poker. You play five hands of video poker at once, which isn’t all that unusual. But you can also be paid for vertical hands as well, which turns this game into something truly unique.

Video poker holds a ton of benefits for gamblers. High on this list is the fact that you can find a variation of poker that fits just about every style of play.

As far as learning strategy for the horizontal hands in Stack ‘em Poker video poker, you should first decide what pay table you’re going to play. Once you’ve done that, you have to set about to learn the mathematically correct play for every possible deal that you might receive.

Many people are satisfied with the most basic format of the game, Jacks or Better, played one hand at a time. Other people love multiple play video poker, which provides more fast-paced action. And you’ll also find a devoted contingent of folks who like to try video poker variations with unique pay tables and special features that alter basic gameplay.
What Makes Stack ‘em Poker Different?

In Stack ‘em Poker video poker, you get a little bit of everything. For example, you’ll be playing five hands of video poker all at once. This is a pretty standard variation, one that speeds up the action and allows you to really benefit from a great deal.

But you can also add an extra bet which will allow you to look at your cards in a different way. As you look at your five hands of five cards each on the screen, you can conceivably pick up winning hands based on vertical columns.

In other words, once you discard from your main hand of Stack ‘em Poker video poker, you will be getting new cards in each specific column where the discarded cards once were. These cards will then be judged separately as five-card video poker hands of their own. You can even get multipliers to beef up the winnings on these hands.

You could conceivably end up with wins nine different ways.

The downside comes from the fact that an unsuccessful round of hands, both horizontal and vertical, can really hurt your bankroll. You could be looking at a loss of 50 coins in one fell swoop. As a result, you have to be prepared to take the good with the bad when playing Stack ‘em Poker video poker.

In the following article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about playing this game. We’ll talk about how basic video poker works, then we’ll look at what occurs when you play Stack ‘em Poker video poker with the special feature enabled. We’ll also look at strategy and talk about what you can expect from the pay tables.

Learning Basic Video Poker

Stack ‘em Poker video poker takes basic video poker and, in a way, stands it on its head. But you really should have a background on how to play basic video poker before you attempt to play this game, which is a bit more complex.

Luckily, basic video poker is a pretty easy thing to learn. If you’ve played any kind of poker card game in the past, video poker should be a snap. And, even if you haven’t, you can certainly figure it out with little problem after playing for a few minutes.

What you’ll find when you begin playing video poker is that it combines many of the things that people love about slot machines and table games. This combination produces a game that is about as gambler-friendly as anything you might find in a casino or as part of an online gambling site.

Like slot machines, you can play video poker without having to deal with anybody else in the casino. You won’t have to get any help from dealers or pit bosses or any other casino employees. And you also won’t have to worry about casino patrons being nosey around your gambling activity.

Video poker also ranks high in terms of payback. Most video poker games, including Stack ‘em Poker video poker, easily outdistance slot machines in this department. In fact, there are many video poker games which can even help mitigate or even eliminate the dreaded house edge.

On top of all that, you’ll find that video poker is an excellent game for online play. You can expect to have the same experience playing video poker in a casino as you would playing on any connected device at an online casino gambling website. And you can usually find all the top games as well.

As we said, Stack ‘em Poker video poker makes for a unique twist on basic video poker. Let’s look at how to play the basic game first before we move on to the special features of Stack ‘em Poker.

Step 1: The Bankroll

Your bankroll for playing at a video poker machine will come from the money that you insert at the start of play. If you’re playing online, it will come from the online account that you fund at the website that you choose to play.

You will see that your bankroll is rendered in units known as credits or coins. Each of these units will correspond to the unit of denomination that you’ve chosen to play. For example, if you were playing at a dollar machine, since each credit is equal to a dollar, a five-credit bet would cost you five dollars.

Step 2: The Bet

Most video poker games require you to bet between one and five credits per hand. But remember that Stack ‘em Poker video poker requires you to play five hands, and you have to bet them all. On top of that, there is a special feature that can be enacted with a separate bet on top of what you wager on each hand.

That extra bet is 25 coins. Which means, if you were to wager the maximum amount of five coins per hand, your total wager would come to 50 coins with the special feature. You could also lower your bet for each individual hand and still enact the special feature if you wish.

We wouldn’t recommend lowering the bet. Betting lower than five coins per hand will lower the proportion of your payout if you hit a royal flush. It drops from 800 coins to 1 (with a max bet) to 250 to 1 (with one though four coins bet).

Ideally, you can make the max bet of 50 coins per round when playing Stack ‘em Poker video poker. That maximizes your expected payback percentage, which is the amount that you can expect to return on average from your wagers. You just have to decide whether that is manageable with your betting budget.

Step 3: The Hand

Video poker essentially replicates the style of play that is featured in the card game known as Five-Card Draw. You get five cards on a deal and have the chance to replace the cards you don’t want with others in the deck. The goal is to make the best possible hand.

When playing Five-Card Draw Poker, you have to try to beat everyone at the table. But, when it comes to video poker, you just have to make one of the winning hands on the pay table.

You will see that winning hands can typically differ depending on what pay table it is. Wild card games, for example, will require a higher threshold for winning hands than games without wild cards. For the most part, though, you will be looking to make the following hands during video poker play:

• 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)

Assess the five cards you receive on the deal to see if any combination of them meets the requirements above for a winning hand. If not, you still can come out a winner on the draw. On the draw, you get to discard the cards that you don’t want and have them replaced with others from the deck.

The draw will come from the same deck which provided you with your deal. Before the deal, it will contain 52 cards, just as any standard deck. For the draw, it will have 47 cards, since the five you received on the deal will no longer be included.

You should base your decision about what to hold and discard on the probability of attaining a winning hand. But you should also take into consideration the amount that each hand pays off. From the above list, the hands at the top pay the least, with the amount of pay rising as you move down.

Of course, the hands at the bottom are the hardest to achieve. That’s why video poker decisions always come down to risk and reward, like so many gambling games.

Once you’ve made your decision, you’ll press the buttons below the cards that you want to hold (if any). Those cards will then be replaced when you hit the “draw” button. The machine (or online game) will replace the cards and the hand will be complete.

That’s how a basic hand of video poker is played. You’ll need that knowledge in terms of making the decisions for Stack ‘em Poker video poker. But the game branches off from there in exciting fashion.

The Special Features of Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker

As we said earlier in the betting section, there are basically two ways to play Stack ‘em Poker video poker. You can play with or without the special feature.

If you play without it, you’re basically looking at five-hand multiple play video poker. You will bet on all five hands then decide on what to hold and discard from a single five-card deal. That decision will then govern all five hands, with the draws coming from five 47-card decks.

To play with the special feature, you need to make that extra 25-coin bet on top of however much you bet on the five basic hands. Once you do, you will be watching the draws to see how they play out vertically as well as horizontally.

Let’s take a look at an example. Imagine that you’ve decided to play Stack ‘em Poker video poker with the max bet and the extra bet for the vertical hands. The first thing you’ll do is assess a five-card deal.

In this deal, there are few ways you can go. You can try for a so-called “inside straight,” which is a straight that requires a single card in the middle of the straight to be drawn. In this case, you would need a six to fill out a four-five-six-seven-eight straight.

Or you could go for the straight flush if you’re feeling really lucky on the draw. You could keep the four, five, and seven of diamonds and hope that you then draw the two cards. It would be a tough draw to make, but you have five different chances, so it might be tempting.

Your other choice is to keep it simple and go for the pair of sevens and hope to improve them on the draw. Let’s assume that’s the choice you make in this round of Stack ‘em Poker video poker. You’ll end up with a matrix of cards that looks like this:

As you should be able to see, the draws will fill out the five different horizontal hands. But there will also be three vertical hands that will be available to you as well.

This will illustrate one of the interesting aspects of Stack ‘em Poker video poker. The less cards you hold, the more chances you’ll have to win vertically. The opposite will occur with the multipliers for the vertical hands, which we’ll get to in a bit.
Let’s see how the draw could perhaps play out:

Eight of Clubs	Seven of Hearts	Seven of Diamonds	Seven of Clubs	Eight of Hearts
Nine of Diamonds	King of Diamonds	Seven of Diamonds	Seven of Clubs	Jack of Hearts
Jack of Hearts	Ace of Hearts	Seven of Diamonds	Seven of Clubs	Five of Hearts
King of Clubs	Ace of Spades	Seven of Diamonds	Seven of Clubs	Seven of Hearts
Queen of Spades	Ace of Diamonds	Seven of Diamonds	Seven of Clubs	Six of Hearts

Let’s take a look at all of the horizontal hands that we’ve created in this round of Stack ‘em Poker video poker:

• Row 1: Full house (sevens and eights)
• Row 2: No winning hand
• Row 3: No winning hand
• Row 4: Three of a kind (sevens)
• Row 5: No winning hand

You would get paid according to the pay table for the hands in Rows 1 and 4. And if you were playing Stack ‘em Poker video poker without the special feature, it would stop there.

But if you bet the extra 25 coins at the start, look at what you would have received:

• Column 1: Straight (from nine through king)
• Column 2: Three of a kind (with aces)
• Column 5: Flush (with hearts)

You would also get paid according to the special vertical pay tables for Stack ‘em Poker video poker (more on that in a moment) for the three winning hands there. All totaled, you ended up with five winning hands out of eight possibilities and are headed for a nice profit in one fell swoop.

That’s the lure of a game like Stack ‘em Poker video poker. Playing video poker a single hand at a time doesn’t give you a lot of chances for the quick, big score. But this game does.

On the other side of the coin, if you end up losing an entire round of Stack ‘em Poker video poker having bet the extra coins, it will be a quick and significant knock on your bankroll. That’s why this might not be the game for casual players to start with if they’re just beginning video poker, not unless they’re prepared to stake themselves sufficiently at the beginning of play.

Multipliers for Vertical Hands

For those who are new to video poker, a multiplier does just what it says—it takes a winning amount and multiplies it. In Stack ‘em Poker video poker, you can be granted multipliers on the vertical hands.

Your chances of getting a multiplier depend on how many cards you hold. The more you hold, the better your chances.

Obviously, if you hold all five cards, the multiplier will be moot, since you won’t have any vertical hands to play. If you don’t hold any, you also have no chance at a multiplier. As for the other hold possibilities:

• 1 card held: 1 in 5 chance of a multiplier between 2x and 3x
• 2 cards held: 1 in 2 chance of a multiplier between 2x and 3x
• 3 cards held: 100% chance of a multiplier between 2x and 4x
• 4 cards held: 100% chance of a multiplier between 2x and 5x

The multiplier amounts will be random, just like your deal and draw. Again, the multipliers are only applied to the vertical hands in Stack ‘em Poker video poker. If you do get a multiplier on an occasion where there are multiple vertical hands, it will be applied to each.

Obviously, multipliers are only a factor on winning hands. If you get a multiplier but don’t have any winning vertical hands, they won’t have any effect because you’ll be multiplying them by zero.

Still, multipliers are another way that Stack ‘em Poker video poker spices up the action. And they’re another reason that the payback for the game is at its highest when you play with the 50-coin wager.

Pay Tables for Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker

Stack ‘em Poker video poker includes many different popular pay tables from which you can choose. But each of those variations contains a separate pay table for the horizontal and the vertical.

You’ll notice the vertical pay tables are much more forgiving in terms of payouts for certain hands. That’s because vertical hands are essentially beyond your control. You can’t make any choices about holds and discards for them, so it’s understandable that it will be harder to get good hands out of them.

There are also certain special combinations that pay off on the vertical hands in Stack ‘em Poker video poker yet don’t come into play in the horizontal hands. When you play with the vertical hands, you have to realize that the same card can show up multiple times within the five cards. As a result, you can get hands like:

• Five of a kind (normally only available with wild cards)
• Suited four of a kind
• Five deuces (in Deuces Wild and Bonus Deuces Wild)

Since these only come up in the vertical hands, you won’t have a chance to strategize for these hands. You just have to hope that the cards go your way on the draw. Still, it’s just another example of Stack ‘em Poker video poker providing you with more ways to win.

Pay tables will also affect the payback percentage. Because of the odd circumstance of the vertical hands, it’s hard to tell what that percentage might be for each pay table. You can’t really use video poker calculators to determine payback percentage in the same way with Stack ‘em Poker video poker as you might with a normal video poker game.

You should at least look to see that the pay tables for the horizontal hands are somewhat comparable to the full-pay versions of these video poker variations. By full-pay, we mean the versions of the games which bring back the highest payback percentage on average.

It’s doubtful that Stack ‘em Poker video poker will have full-pay pay tables for you. If they did, the bonus from the vertical hands would probably remove the house edge in a significant manner. The best you can hope is to find versions of the pay table that come close to the ones below, which aren’t too far off full-pay and have been found on Stack ‘em Poker machines.

Here are some of the horizontal pay tables you might find for Stack ‘em Poker video poker.

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	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

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)	25	50	75	100	125
Full house	6	12	18	24	30
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	24
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Bonus Poker Deluxe 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	80	160	240	320	400
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 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)	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	16	24	30
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 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 aces without any 2,3,4	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four 2s, 3s, 4s w/ any A,2,3,4	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four aces	160	320	480	640	800
Four 2s, 3s, 4s	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5s through Ks	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	2	4	6	8	10
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Pair of jacks +	1	2	3	4	5

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	20	40	60	80	100
Five of a kind	12	24	36	48	60
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

Bonus 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 plus ace	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four deuces	200	400	600	800	1,000
Wild royal flush	25	50	75	100	150
Five of a kind aces	80	160	240	320	400
Five of a kind two through four	40	80	120	160	200
Five of a kind five through king	20	40	60	80	100
Straight flush	10	20	30	40	50
Four of a kind	4	8	12	16	20
Full house	3	6	9	12	15
Flush	3	6	9	12	15
Straight	1	2	3	4	5
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

Here are the corresponding vertical pay tables for Stack ‘em Poker video poker. Note that there is no need to list payouts for one through four coins, since there’s no way to lower your bet on the vertical pay tables.

Strategy for Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker

When playing Stack ‘em Poker video poker with the extra feature enabled, there isn’t any need for you to devise a new strategy. The vertical hands are out of your control. You can just control the horizontal hands, which you should do in the same manner as always.

You might think that it’s better to hold less cards in Stack ‘em Poker video poker because it will open up more vertical hands. But this is balanced out by the fact that the multipliers are more likely to occur if you hold more cards. There is no real advantage either way.

This might sound like an impossible task. That’s why you should have others do the math for you beforehand.

What do we mean by that? Well, the following methods of video poker instruction can get you to perfect play, which will then help you maximize your winnings.

Video Poker Training Software

By using video poker training software, you can get to perfect play. But it won’t happen overnight. You have to use the software over a long amount of time until you have all the moves down pat.

It simulates video poker play based on a specific pay table. When you’re confronted with a decision about what to hold and discard, and you can’t figure it out, the software will let you know the right play.

Strategy Charts

Strategy charts might get you to perfect play a little bit faster than training software, but you have to be pretty good at memorization for that to happen. You can’t expect to bring a strategy chart into a casino and use it, unless you want to get some dirty looks from the employees (and perhaps get escorted out).

If you can memorize a strategy chart, which ranks all of the possible card combinations you might get on a deal by their expected value, you’ll make the right choice each hand. You just have to look at each deal to see which combination of yours is ranked the highest. Once you spot those cards, you can discard the others.

Pros and Cons of Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker

Stack ‘em Poker Video Poker Conclusion

Stack ‘em Poker video poker makes you look left and right, up and down to see what you could win. There are perhaps too many unknowns about the game to make it a great option for long-term play. But it can really provide some thrills during a short session.