How to Play Turbo Poker Video Poker Online

Turbo Poker Online video poker presents a little bit of a wrinkle on common video poker action. You have to make a bet to get a deal, then make another bet of the same amount to play the hand. But it makes up for that extra cost by providing higher payback for most winning hands.

Most video poker players are familiar with the most basic format of the game, also known as Jacks or Better. Hands are paid off strictly based on common winning hands in the game. This makes it an easily understandable style of play for beginners.

But the boom in online gambling has given manufacturers and creators the reason to changes things up. Since the demand for online video poker has grown, many experienced players are willing to try some of these new variations.

In the case of Turbo Poker Online video poker, the main change to the game comes in the way that betting takes place. Most video poker games require just a single wager to play the game. From there, you can receive your deal and make your decisions about what cards to hold and discard.

Turbo Poker Online video poker asks you to make a bet just to receive the deal. At that point, you’ll have the choice whether you want to continue with the hand. If you don’t want to do so, the five cards from the deal will be thrown out and you’ll start fresh for the next hand.

If you like the cards you’ve been dealt, however, you can make another wager equal to the first bet to continue with the hand. From there, you can make your choices on holds and discards. As usual, you’ll be paid for any winning combinations you form.

As you might be able to tell, such a scenario requires you to bet twice what you normally would to play a potentially good deal. Normally, that would bring your payback to levels where you’d be losing a bunch. But Turbo Poker Online video poker offers some compensation.

It does this in the form of the pay table. Payback amounts for all of the winning hands on the table are higher than what you would expect from most video poker games. You’ll be pleasantly surprised when you make some of these winning hands and see your bankroll surge.

The downside is that it puts some extra stress on your bankroll. Extra payback on the Turbo Poker Online video poker helps to make up for that somewhat, as we said. But the payback percentage for the game overall lags behind some of the more competitive versions of video poker.

In the following article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the game known as Online Turbo Poker video poker. We’ll explain how to play the game and how it differs from most video poker games. And we’ll also look into strategy and payback for this game.

Why Video Poker Is So Popular

As we said, Online Turbo Poker video poker is part of a new surge in online video poker action. More and more developers are creating games like this, which allow people either to play online for fun or to try and play for real money as if they were in the casino. Games like this can then often make the jump from an online setting into the casino if they prove popular enough.

In any case, the gameplay for Turbo Poker Online video poker is still based on video poker as most people know it. Like so many other variations on the game, it offers a little bit of a twist to change things up a bit. But it’s not so drastic that the game is unrecognizable.

That’s a good thing, because even basic video poker offers more advantages to players than most other casino offerings. You’ll see video poker described sometimes as a combination of slot machines and table games.

In a way, that’s true. But, as you’ll see, video poker keeps only the good qualities. That’s one of the reasons why many video poker enthusiasts insist on playing their favorites and nothing else when they gamble online or in casinos.

Let’s explore some of the ways in which video poker makes for such a complete and enjoyable gambling experience.

• Video poker only requires oner person to play. If you’re the type who gets annoyed by the hassles created by other players or casino employees, this quality alone is worth it. You can play video poker at your own pace and not have to speed up or slow down to accommodate others.
• Video poker never has to be played the same way twice. By that, we mean there are hundreds of different types of games found online or in casinos. For the reasons that we mentioned above, it’s likely that the list of available games will only continue to grow.
• Video poker is really easy to play. It’s so easy, in fact, that even if you’ve never played any type of poker before, you can still be up and running within minutes. Of course, if you do know how to form poker hands, you’ll understand it even faster.
• Video poker presents you with the chance to use strategy when you play. That makes it different from slot machines, which can be played by one person like video poker. If you make good decisions playing video poker, your payback potential rises in the long run.
• Video poker is one of the most transparent types of casino games you can find. You have access to the pay tables, which help you with strategy. And basic probability will give you an estimate of how often you can expect winning hands will appear.
• Video poker pays back very well when compared to other video poker games. Again, this is an area where video poker does better than slot machines. You can even find certain video poker games that give you a chance to make a profit.
• Video poker makes for a complete online gambling experience at top gambling websites. All that you’ll be missing when playing video poker online are the crowds. The looks and gameplay of online video poker is exactly the same as what you would find in casinos with video poker machines.

Hopefully, you now have an idea of why games like Turbo Poker Online video poker are so popular. Let’s talk about how to play basic video poker so that you can learn how Turbo Poker separates itself a bit.

Basic Video Poker Gameplay

Step 1: Manage Your Bankroll

When you play video poker for real money, you have to fund a bankroll so that you can make your wagers. If playing online, you’ll create a gambling account and fund it with credit cards or, if the website allows, an alternative method like cryptocurrency. Casino video poker players will simply insert money into the slot on the machine.

Once your bankroll is in place, you’ll often see it represented by single units, such as credits or coins. These units will correspond to the denomination that you’re playing. For example, if you bet five coins on a 25-cent machine, you’ll be betting $1.25 (5 times .25).

Step 2: Place Your Bet

This is an area where Turbo Poker Online video poker separates in many ways from common video poker. In a later section, we’ll explain the process of betting on both the deal and to play the hand. But you also need to know that this game doesn’t put as much stress on you to make the maximum wager as other video poker games do.

But Online Turbo Poker video poker offers payback that is directly related to how much you bet. And that goes for the royal flush as well. As a result, there is no edge to you in payback if you bet more per hand.

In addition, you’re likely to find versions of Online Turbo Poker video poker which allows you to have more options in terms of betting increments. This will often come into play when the denomination you’re using is really low. When that’s the case, you might find some lure in betting far beyond five coins per hand.

Step 3: Build Your Hand

We’ll show below how Online Turbo Poker video poker gives you an extra decision to make when you receive your deal. But, just so you get the hang of it, we’ll focus now on the way to play a normal hand, as if you were playing Jacks or Better. You’ll need that foundation as you learn this new game.

Video poker plays like a simulated version of the table game known as Five-Card Draw. In Five-Card Draw, everybody at the table receives a deal of five cards and can then discard cards to have them replaced by others in the deck. The player with the best poker hand wins.

Five-Card Draw Poker also allows you to bluff everybody at the table with big bets, since they can’t see your hand. But in video poker, there’s no need for bluffing or anything like that, because your hand isn’t hidden. And all you have to do to win money back is form one of the winning combinations on the pay table after you go through the process of deal and draw.

In the case of Turbo Poker Online video poker, these are the winning hands which will offer some payback to you if you achieve them.

• 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)

It’s important to understand the hierarchy of the hands listed here. The ones at the top of the list will appear relatively often, but won’t pay back that much. Once you get closer to the bottom of the list, you’ll be dealing with hands that come up rarely but also pay back much more than the common hands.

In other words, the rarer the hand, the more payback you get from it. That little contradiction will be at the heart of all the decisions you make while playing your hands of video poker.

Once you’ve made your wager and signaled for the deal by clicking on the icon on the screen, you’ll see five cards appear. These five cards will be dealt at random from a deck of 52 that’s just like the standard deck you might have in your drawer at home. And you can be assured of the randomness of each deal, because the software running the game ensures that this is so.

How to Make Your Video Poker Decision

When you see these five cards, you’ll have to start assessing which ones, if any, you’ll want to hold, and which ones, if any, you’ll want to discard. The cards that we hold will be included in your final hand. You’ll have the chance to draw new cards for the ones that you discard.

Keep in the mind that the draw will take place from a deck of 47 cards. There are 47 because the five cards you were dealt will no longer be a part of it. That also means that you won’t get any of the cards you were dealt back in your hand in the draw.

Well, you have to consider your chances of attaining one of the winning hands based on what you have in your hand and what’s still left in the deck. But you should also be thinking about the potential payback attached to the hands you pursue.

It’s a game of risk versus reward, as is the case with most casino games. There will be times when it makes sense to play it safe and ensure payback of some sort, even if it isn’t too much. And there will also be times when it makes more sense to go for one of the high-paying hands on the pay table, even if it will take an extremely lucky draw for that to happen.

In any case, once you make your decision, you’ll press the buttons (or touch the screen) corresponding to the cards that you want to hold. Once you hit the button signaling the draw, the cards you’ve discarded will be replaced with others from the deck. Your hand is complete at this point and any winnings you’ve earned will be added.

Video poker play can continue in this manner as long as you have credits left to play. You can also cash out at any time as well. If you’re playing online, you’ll have to check the website’s requirements for withdrawals to see how you can collect these winnings.

That should give you an idea of how basic video poker works. Now we can move on to the specifics of Turbo Poker Online video poker.

Turbo Poker Online Video Poker Gameplay

For the most part, Turbo Poker Online video poker goes along in pretty much the same way as the process we described above. But there is one major shift that will affect both your decision-making and the economics of the game as it pertains to your bankroll.

As we said above in the betting section, basic video poker, like Jacks or Better, gives you access to the deal once you make an initial wager. That amount is deducted at the moment the hand begins. And that’s the end of the financial commitment you have to make for that particular hand.

In Online Turbo Poker video poker, however, betting is essentially a two-step process. You’ll bet to start off the hand and get your deal, as always. From there, you have a decision to make.

If you decide that the five cards you receive don’t give you a very good chance of forming a winning combination, you can stop the hand right there. There’s a button on the screen which will signal to deal a new hand.

If, however, you like the five cards you’ve been dealt and want to continue with it, you’ll press the hold buttons as always. Once you’ve done this and hit the icon to signal the draw, you are essentially committing to a second wager that allows you to play this hand.

Giving up on the Hand

Let’s take a look at how this process might play out. Imagine that you received the following five-card deal while playing Online Turbo Poker video poker on a bet of five coins.

Looking at this deal, you’ll see that you don’t have much to work with in terms of trying to form a winning hand. If you were playing basic Jacks or Better video poker, this might be an example of a deal where you would discard everything and take your chances on getting lucky on a five-card draw round.

At most, you might keep the jack, since you would only need one more on the draw to form a pair. That would at least get you even-money on a Jacks or Better pay table.

As we’ll see when we get to pay tables, Turbo Poker Online video poker does not offer payback for a pair of jacks. There is really no incentive here for you to go forward in this hand. You can therefore decide to simply move on to the next hand and accept your loss of five coins.

In Turbo Poker Online video poker, the only way you could move forward in this hand would be to bet another five coins. And, to do that, you’d need to choose at least one card to hold. This game doesn’t give you the option to discard five cards.

Not only would you be committing another five coins to a lousy deal, but holding on to one of the cards is poor strategy. In this case, the good decision would be to move on to the next hand.

Playing out the Hand

Let’s look at another sample deal.

There are no winning combinations from this deal, at least not on a Turbo Poker Online video poker pay table. But this deal at least gives you several possibilities in terms of potential winning hands on the draw.

You have a pair of queens. If you discarded the other three cards, you could make three of a kind by drawing just one more queen. And you could also end up drawing hands like two pair, a full house or four of a kind, all winners.

Another option would be to hold on to the four spades you have. That would leave you just one shy of a flush. In this scenario, you would drop the queen of hearts and hope to draw one of the nine spades still in the deck.

Finally, you could hold on to the five, six and seven of spades. That would put you in the running for the straight flush, one of the most lucrative hands in the game. But with two cards to draw, you’d be keeping open the option for several other winning possibilities.

This is a deal where it would be worth it for you to bet and play out the hand. It would bring your total financial commitment to the hand up to ten coins. But you would have a pretty good shot of a significant winning hand if you continued to the draw.

Some might like that extra challenge. Others might feel that it puts another burden on you without adding enough to make up for that. It will be up to you to decide how you feel about Online Turbo Poker video poker before committing to playing it.

Pay Table for Online Turbo Poker Video Poker

When playing any video poker game, it’s crucial to take a good look at the pay table. This will help you with everything from strategy to building your bankroll. Too many novice video players ignore the pay table and it costs them in the long run.

In the case of Turbo Poker Online video poker, it contains a pay table that is pretty unique in comparison to other video poker games. Let’s take a look at the pay table you’re most likely to find online.

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Royal flush	1000	2000	3000	4000	5000
Straight flush	400	800	1200	1600	2000
Four of a kind	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	15	30	45	60	75
Flush	9	18	27	36	45
Straight	7	14	21	28	35
Three of a kind	5	10	15	20	25
Two pairs	3	6	9	12	15

To read the pay table, you have to connect the winning hands to the amount bet. For example, imagine you made three of a kind on a five-coin wager. When you connect those two rows, you’ll see the number 25, which means 25 coins will be going into your bankroll.

We mentioned above that many Turbo Poker Online video poker online games allow you to stretch the amount wagered past five coins. If that’s the case, simply multiply the number in the one-coin column with the amount wagered to calculate the total winnings for bets higher than five coins. For example, a flush on a 10-coin wager will equal 90 coins (9 times 10) in winnings.

For some context, let’s now look at one of the most common Jacks or Better pay tables available.

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 pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

When you compare the two, you’ll see that the Turbo Poker Online video poker comes out on top in every single winning hand by a decent margin. Most video poker players could never imagine getting 15 to 1 on a full house or 5 to 1 for three of a kind, using just two of the examples found here.

But you have to consider the fact that the only way you can get to those winning hands is to bet twice as much when playing. That fact mitigates the impact of the higher payback somewhat.
After all, the Jacks or Better pay table may have more modest payback totals for the winning hands. But you won’t need to bet twice to get at them.

Also note that the Turbo Poker Online video poker doesn’t offer payback for a pair of high cards, like the Jacks or Better one does. As a result, the volatility level for Online Turbo Poker video poker, already high because of the betting structure, goes up a few more notches. Not getting payback for such a common hand will hurt your bankroll.

It’s a good idea, therefore, to go into a session of Turbo Poker video poker, with a robust bankroll in place. A slump will hurt you much more when playing this game than it will playing basic video poker. Having a big bankroll will prevent you from losing all you have before you can take advantage of some of the nice payouts on the pay table.

Payback Percentage for Online Turbo Poker Video Poker

On average, the payback for Online Turbo Poker video poker comes in at right around 96%. In other words, during an average session, someone playing the game could expect to leave with 96% of their bankroll intact after it has all been bet. That would mean a 4% loss.

How does that compare with other video poker games? Well, many of the best video poker games comes in with payback of over 99%. That’s the level we generally recommend for games that you want to play with regularity.

Why is 99% an important threshold? Well, you can expect to lose a minimal amount playing a game with that kind of payback. And you can atone for those losses through online rewards or casino loyalty programs in a way you can eliminate the house edge.

In the case of game where you were only making 96% on average, It’s unlikely that you could hope to make a profit when playing the game day in and day out. And that means your gambling investment will eventually fall into the red.

As a result, even though Turbo Poker video poker isn’t recommended for serious video poker players as a regular destination, it can make for a lucrative pit stop. Just the unique twist on betting alone might make it worth while for many people craving a new way to look at the game.

Strategy for Online Turbo Poker Video Poker

For most video poker games, strategy is limited to choosing the cards that you hold and discard from each deal. By making the right decisions on every hand, you can maximize your payback amount.

Strategy, like payback percentage, should be thought of more as a long-term concern. You can get away with occasional mistakes when playing video poker for a short time because of luck. But, over time, wrong decisions will cost you money.

Turbo Poker Online video poker adds another strategic element to the game. The twist of having to bet both on the deal then to play the hand out is the driver behind the extra strategy.

Just like the decisions about what to hold and what to discard, making the wrong decisions about when to make the extra bet on Turbo Poker Online video poker and when to call it quits will have a negative impact on your payback. As a result, you have to come up with some way of accounting for this.

How to Handle the Extra Bet

Finding out the correct strategy for most video poker games requires following the directions offered by resources like video poker training software and strategy charts. We’ll talk more about them in a moment when we get to holds and discards.

The problem with Online Turbo Poker video poker is that it’s a relatively new game. And the extra strategy caused by the betting structure usually isn’t included in the traditional video poker training resources. As a result, you’re a bit on your own in that department.

Perhaps the best way to approach this, then, is to base your decision on when to make the bet on what the choices on the holds and discards tell you. What do we mean by that?

If, on the other hand, you’re thinking of holding even a couple cards because of their potential heading into the deal, you might want to consider going on with the hand. If the deal has that kind of promise, you should probably take the game and continue on, even though that means making the extra wager.

This is by no means a surefire method that will guarantee the right mathematical decision. But it should, for the most part, result in accurate selections when it comes to the extra wagers to play out hands of Turbo Poker Online video poker.

Choosing Holds and Discards

As for holds and discards, these are traditional elements of video poker. That means you shouldn’t have trouble finding instruction on them that will help you achieve perfect play.
What do we mean when we talk about perfect play? Perfect play occurs any time you can make the right choice about what to hold and what to discard every single time.

In each deal of video poker, there are 32 different combinations available to you in terms of holds and discards. Turbo Poker Online video poker lowers that total to 31, because you can’t discard all five cards once you decide to play out the hand. There is only one of these combinations that will unlock the highest earning potential for the deal.

Trying to figure all of this out on your own can be problematic. The math involved is extremely complex, especially when you’re trying to play the game at a reasonable pace. You can easily make mistakes when you go this route.

Instead, you should get some help to learn the right plays. Luckily, resources for learning video poker can assist in this regard. They’ve already done the math, so all you have to do is check out the results and learn them.

Here are the two methods of video poker instruction we recommend.

• Video poker Training Software: With training software, you can play hands of a game of video poker just as if you were playing for real money. As you’re faced with choices about what to hold and discard, the software will push you in the right direction. After practicing for a while, you’ll know how to play every possible hand.
• Strategy Charts: Strategy charts can be found online and can allow you to achieve perfect play if you memorize them. These charts rank all possible card combinations in terms of their value heading into the draw. It allows you to locate the cards that bring the most value to your hand and, therefore, should be held.

Turbo Poker Video Poker Pros and Cons

Online Turbo Poker Video Poker Conclusion

Online Turbo Poker video poker lets you opt in for the deals that you think will be beneficial to you. But you have to pay for that privilege by betting again just to play out the hand. The pay table gives you a break with high payback amounts, but it might not be enough for you to find this game an appealing long-term option.