one eyed jacks video poker
One-Eyed Jacks video poker is a wild-card video poker variation. In this game, the wild cards are the one-eyed jack cards i.e. Jacks of hearts and spades. Moreover, a distinctive difference from most other wild card games is that a Royal Flush made with Jacks of hearts and spades qualifies to be a natural Royal Flush. The biggest advantage is that you need not force these one-eyed jack cards to be wild.
One-eyed jacks are cards where only one eye of a jack is visible on the card. And, this is noticed only in Jacks of Hearts and Jacks of Spades. One-eyed jacks video poker is played like all wild-card video poker games. As with all poker games, the focus is on making the best winning hand possible from the cards you have. Typically, a dealer or the machine will deal 5 cards to you. You can either keep or discard any of these cards or all of them. The discarded cards will be replaced at the draw when you click the ‘draw’ button. And when you have decided to keep a hand, you need to hit the ‘hold’ button on the video screen. Your hand will then be validated by the machine and if it is a winning hand, you will be paid out based on the paytable for winning hands.
Ideally, there are two wild cards in the deck of 52 in one-eyed jacks video poker. The pay schedule return for the variants of one-eyed jacks video poker is as follows:
- 200/75/50 100.28%
- 180/80/50 99.98%
- 150/75/50 98.96%
- 150/75/45 97.95%
The basic paytable for one-eyed jacks video poker is shown below:
| Hand | Pays | Combinations | Probability | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nat. Royal Flush | 800 | 517357408 | 0.000026 | 0.020764 |
| Wild Royal Flush | 200 | 5389058980 | 0.00027 | 0.054071 |
| Five of a kind | 75 | 9264247202 | 0.000465 | 0.034857 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 40238004250 | 0.002019 | 0.100932 |
| Four of a kind | 15 | 402672195348 | 0.020201 | 0.303016 |
| Full House | 5 | 385743244800 | 0.019352 | 0.096759 |
| Flush | 3 | 351977034740 | 0.017658 | 0.052973 |
| Straight | 2 | 597327460550 | 0.029966 | 0.059933 |
| Three of a kind | 1 | 3688210843150 | 0.185028 | 0.185028 |
| Two pair | 1 | 1883259382770 | 0.094478 | 0.094478 |
| Nothing | 0 | 12568631688002 | 0.630537 | 0.000000 |
| Total | 0 | 19933230517200 | 1 | 1.002800 |
The basic game plan is simple. When you have a wild-card, jacks of hearts and spades in this case, you can substitute this card for other cards to make a winning hand. Consequently, the chances of making a winning hand are higher and you will have greater flexibility in the hand as well. In Royal Flushes you would need Jacks, Kings, Queens and Aces. So, when you are one card less from the same suit, you can substitute the Jack of spades or hearts to make a wild Royal Flush. At the same time, you can make a natural Royal Flush with the Jack of spades or hearts if the rest of the hand is of the same suit. So, the payout will be equal to that of a natural Royal Flush.
