A Beginner’s Guide to Video Poker Payout Percentages

Video poker looks like a slot machine and plays like a card game, but the number that decides whether you leave ahead is printed right on the screen. That number is the payout percentage, also called return to player (RTP), and it changes from one paytable to the next. Canadian players who learn to read it before inserting a single coin have a real edge over the players who pick a machine by its colour scheme. This primer walks through the mechanics for beginners, with the differences between Ontario-regulated rooms and offshore operations like Imperial Wins casino kept front and centre.

Read the paytable before you read the cards

Every video poker machine carries a paytable that lists what each hand pays per coin wagered. The top row usually shows a royal flush at 250 coins per coin played for five-coin bets, then straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, and jacks or better. The payout percentage is simply the total expected return across all those hands divided by the total wagered, assuming you play every hand with optimal strategy. A game with a 99.54% RTP returns 99.54 cents of every dollar staked over the long run, which leaves a house edge of under half a percent.

The single most useful habit is to compare the full house and flush payouts across machines. On a standard 9/6 Jacks or Better paytable, a full house pays 9 coins and a flush pays 6 coins per coin bet, and that configuration produces the 99.54% figure. A 8/5 paytable, where the full house drops to 8 and the flush to 5, cuts the return to roughly 97.3%. The difference sounds small until you run the numbers over a few hundred hands: a player staking $1.25 per hand for an hour at 500 hands will lose about $2.90 at 99.54% but about $16.90 at 97.3%. Same game, same cards, different paytable.

Ontario players have an advantage here because the province runs its own regulated market. Any video poker offered to Ontario residents through a licensed operator must meet the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario’s minimum payout standard of 85%, and in practice the Jacks or Better machines in provincially regulated rooms typically sit at 99% or higher. Offshore operations are a different story. At Imperial Wins, which targets players in Canada and runs under gaming licence OGL/2024/284/0863 granted by the Government of Curacao, the video poker variants often pay in the 97% range rather than the 99% range. That is not a scandal; it is a licensing difference. The Curacao licence sets requirements around segregation of player funds and fair play, but it does not impose the same RTP floor as the AGCO. Check the paytable, not the marketing copy.

Understand the licence behind the machine

Imperial Wins is operated by ABC Interactive N.V., a company registered in Curacao, and its payment processing runs through NextWay Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of ABC Interactive N.V. based in Limassol, Cyprus. That corporate structure matters to a beginner because it explains where your money sits and which regulator hears your complaint. Curacao-licensed casinos must keep player funds segregated from operating capital, which is a meaningful protection if the operator runs into trouble, but the enforcement machinery is not the same as Ontario’s. Ontario players who want the provincial regulator behind them should stick to AGCO-licensed rooms; players who choose an offshore Imperial Wins online casino account should understand they are dealing with a Curacao regulator and a Cyprus-based payment entity.

The licence number itself, OGL/2024/284/0863, is worth verifying on the Curacao gaming authority’s public register before you deposit. That takes two minutes and tells you whether the operator is currently in good standing. https://imperialwins24.ca/ covers this in more depth. A casino licence is not a quality badge; it is a minimum bar. The paytable on the specific machine you are about to play is the number that actually affects your bankroll.

Beyond the licence, look at the cashier terms. Deposit methods at offshore rooms often include Interac, Visa, and crypto, and withdrawal verification usually requires ID and proof of address before the first payout. Ontario-regulated rooms follow the same pattern but with provincial oversight of the process. Either way, complete verification before you win, not after, because a pending withdrawal that stalls on documentation is the most common beginner complaint in both markets.

Pick variants that suit your bankroll and patience

Jacks or Better is the right starting point for almost every beginner. The strategy is simple enough to learn in an afternoon, the volatility is low, and the 9/6 paytable is the benchmark against which every other variant gets measured. Once you can play Jacks or Better at near-optimal strategy, you can afford to look at Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, or Deuces Wild, each of which trades a slightly different paytable structure for higher variance. Deuces Wild in particular has a steep strategy curve; a beginner playing it badly can turn a 99% game into a 97% effective return without noticing.

The game studios that supply video poker to Canadian-facing operators generally license the same core variants, so the paytable is the differentiator, not the software house. If you also play slots between video poker sessions, the same discipline applies: hold and win slots and titles like Big Bass Splash, 3 Pots Riches: Hold and Win, and Coins of Zeus – Hold & Win are entertainment products with house edges in the 3% to 6% range, while a good video poker paytable can get you under 1%. Live dealers and table games sit somewhere in between. None of this is a reason to avoid slots; it is a reason to know which product you are choosing and why.

Mobile casino apps run the same paytables as their desktop counterparts, so there is no RTP penalty for playing on your phone. What does change on mobile is your ability to check the paytable carefully before you commit. Take the extra thirty seconds. The welcome bonus is also worth reading closely: most video poker contributions to wagering requirements are capped at 10% or excluded entirely, so a bonus that looks generous on slots may be near-worthless on video poker. Check the terms before you claim.

Set a session budget, treat the payout percentage as a long-run average rather than a promise for tonight, and remember that responsible play tools like deposit limits and time-outs are available at every licensed operator. A 99% RTP still loses money in the short term roughly four sessions out of ten; the percentage only pays off over thousands of hands. Check the full house and flush rows first, confirm the licence, verify your account early, and then sit down to play. That checklist takes five minutes and is the difference between a beginner and a player who knows what they are doing.