The Fate of Video Poker

Video poker has generated a sizable subculture of players over the years. Diehard video poker fans have been devoted casino patrons, sharing information on the places to find the highest-returning pay schedules, double-point days, and other player-friendly policies that, in many cases, have taken the traditionally low-hold/high-RTP games and actually turned them into a player-advantage situation.

For that subculture of video poker diehards, the halcyon days of video poker most certainly are in the past. However, according to many—certainly to officials of IGT, producer of the lion’s share of video poker games in the market—that doesn’t mean the pending end of the game genre. On the contrary, IGT continues to tweak the genre with inventive new multi-hand formats that add slot-like bonuses and multipliers to the basic game, without affecting what made it popular in the first place.

That popularity, of course, was based on the truism that a video poker player can take an active role in his or her chances of success by applying strategy to the draw portion of the video poker game. Video poker was the original “skill-based” gaming machine, with return-to-player percentages approaching or even eclipsing the 100 percent mark—a group of games collectively known as “full-pay” video poker—if a player perfects the strategy needed to reach the optimal payback.

Simple Beginnings

Video poker has come a long way since IGT founder Si Redd introduced the genre in the 1970s. Redd created what we today know as video poker while he was a contractor for Reno-based Bally Distributing of Nevada. Famously rejected by Bally for development and sale of the new game, Redd created his own company, originally called A-1 Supply, then Sircoma, and ultimately, incorporated in 1981 as International Game Technology.

By the time Redd created IGT, his video poker was a hot new offering on casino floors. With a little research, players could tell by simply looking at the pay table whether they were sitting down at a full-pay version of the game. This was unique on the slot floor, and it soon spawned a small group of experts who had worked out the math to determine the proper draw on each possible five-card hand to achieve the highest potential payback.

In the pre-internet era, books, player magazines and in-person lessons were popular with would-be video poker experts, who would seek to learn the strategy to best equip them for the new game. Many casinos even hosted video poker lessons and welcomed players, knowing that the multitude of customers who hadn’t mastered strategy would more than make up for a few expert advantage players. Additionally, they knew that video poker players were loyal customers who would bring spouses, other relatives and friends to the casino to play higher-holding slots—another hedge against those players who achieved the optimal video poker payback.

Also, the payback percentage of video poker with proper strategy already was higher than any of the reel-spinners dominating the slot floor back in the late 1970s. The original Player’s Edge Video Poker was a basic Jacks or Better draw poker game. With optimal strategy, the RTP was 99.54 percent—a previously unheard-of house advantage of 0.46 percent. Once casino players clubs were established in the mid-1980s, coin coupons, free food, comp rooms and other perks easily pushed the overall return of the games over 100 percent.

By that time, the new Bonus Poker genre had emerged. First designed by then-IGT executive Bob Bittman and his product team in the custom “Aces and Faces” game for Binion’s Horseshoe, this new style of video poker paid bonuses for four Aces and four face cards. Soon came Bonus Poker, which ingeniously paid bonuses for three of the lowest cards in the deck (2, 3 and 4). That game spawned Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus and several others—all with optimal RTP well above slots, even without the top pay tables.

In the late 1990s, the genre was given a major boost by the appearance of Triple Play Poker and other multi-hand variants that sustain the popularity of video poker to this day.

Nowadays, the bulk of the education on video poker strategy resides online on sites like videopoker.com, owned by Action Gaming, whose founder, Ernie Moody, holds the patent on multi-hand video poker. That site, Wizardof-Odds.com and others give the community of diehard video poker enthusiasts an easy way to learn strategy and swap information on where to find the highest-returning video poker games.

The Video Poker Retreat

That search for full-pay video poker has been more like a treasure hunt in recent years, as casino slot directors have targeted the game genre in cost-cutting efforts, largely in response to exterior economic events.

First, in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-09, the top pay tables began to disappear from video poker in many casinos, even ones that were historically player-friendly in the genre. Meanwhile, video poker became scarce in tourist markets like the Las Vegas Strip, or else were offered in the lowest-returning pay schedules—for instance, 6/5 Jacks or Better (6-for-1 for a full house, 5-for-1 for a flush), returning 95 percent compared to 99.54 percent for the full-pay 9/6 version.

As casinos reopened after the 2020 pandemic shutdowns, those lower-returning games became the norm in other markets, including Atlantic City and regional markets like Pennsylvania. Some casinos even removed video poker altogether.

Video poker enthusiasts can still count on markets like local Las Vegas and Reno to find low-hold, high-RTP video poker, but even those markets are beginning to fray.

“Having a variety of games is important, and that includes video poker,” says Cliff Paige, slot director of one of the most popular locals casinos in Las Vegas, the South Point. “That said, the number of units must pull their weight with regards to revenue.”

Paige notes that while some casinos began to remove high-paying video poker years before the Covid-19 crisis, the need to recover from pandemic shutdowns coincided with a rise in popularity of low-denomination video slots. “(The decline) began years before Covid, but I don’t think the speed really changed since Covid,” he says. “Rather, it coincided with a surge in other game types, like video reels, and new game mechanics on those games as well.”

“You are seeing more and more of this as operators continue to focus on floor profitability maximization and hold percentage ROI,” notes Mark Birtha, president of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sacramento. “The right blend of video poker, though, offers a compelling total experience for guests to enjoy as part of the overall slot floor mix.

“This also can vary if you are in a market that doesn’t allow for table games. Tax rates are also impacting whether this type of product has a firm presence on the gaming floor.”

Buddy Frank, who ran slots at Reno’s Atlantis and was the longtime vice president of slot operations at California’s Pechanga Resort, is one of the operators who was dedicated to offering high returns in video poker.

“It is true that video poker shares on slot floors have been declining,” Frank says. “I believe one factor is the relentless pursuit of greater and greater profitability. As almost everyone knows, video poker can offer some of the best odds of any gaming product, including table games, if played well. The April 2025 Eilers & Krejcik report showed that the popular IGT Game King (multi-game video poker) occupied 4.2 percent of gaming floors, but only produced 2.4 percent of the profitability. That alone makes them unpopular with CFOs.”

Frank adds that the popularity of free play as an incentive reward has increased the fears of many operators with respect to expert video poker play. “The other element of video poker’s decline has been advantage players’ abuse of free play,” he says.

“Because these advantage-player pros are so good, they can drive the holds of video poker to lower than 1 percent or 2 percent. With many marketers offering free play and promotions of 3 percent or more, it was easy for a casino to get ‘upside down.’”

But that doesn’t mean low-hold video poker will necessarily hurt the bottom line.

“Such stark financial statistics ignore the fact that these players are extremely loyal,” Frank says. “If a property eliminated their poker machines, they would probably lose these players completely. Make no mistake, video poker players will not automatically jump to the latest video reel games. So, why would you willingly give up 2.4 percent of your revenue?”

Paige adds that it’s not only valuable for operators to keep video poker, but to keep the highest-returning pay tables on those games. “If you’re going to have a product on your floor and ask the player to come into your place and gamble, then they should at least get a fair, low-hold game,” he says.

Birtha, who currently operates in the Northern California market and has also held operations positions in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Arizona and Ohio, adds that the quality and quantity of video poker on floors will vary according to the market.

“You tend to see markets that are more locals-focused, with high-frequency visitation, have a larger footprint for these types of (low-hold) games,” Birtha says. “Player sophistication and knowledge also varies as you see more guests in these types of markets play for both fun and long-term value proposition.

“You can get more for your dollar as a guest playing these types of games, and not only are they a fun and challenging game, but in the right markets and casino locations, a savvy player can improve both their ROI and their accumulation of points, comps and benefits with these games.”

He adds that the size of the casino can play a big role in whether high-returning video poker is offered. “If you are floor space-constrained and in a market with higher tax rates, you truly need to focus on getting the best return from every square foot of your property,” he says. “Proper game mix determination is driven by both guest demand and the performance of the game in tandem with the reinvestment driven by it.”

The New Video Poker

IGT has maintained dominance in the video poker genre since its inception in the 1970s. Even if some casinos have reduced inventory of the original single-hand units, the company has adjusted with a parade of innovation in the multi-hand video poker genre.

Over the past decade, IGT has launched a range of video poker that includes bonus sequences adding multipliers to enhance hand results, bonuses similar to slot games, and, most recently, games like Wheel of Fortune Poker, which adds a word puzzle sequence like the TV game show, and 5 Card Plus 2 Poker, where there is a five-card pay table and a seven-card pay table. In the latter example, for an extra five-credit bet, every winning hand has a one-in-three chance of adding two extra cards to pay off on the seven-card table as well.

The common thread in all these games is that the special bonus feature does not affect the basic pay table—an ante bet activates the bonus feature, with the standard pays remaining the same.

Darnell Johnson, vice president of global product management and commercialization, video poker for IGT, says the new multi-hand games—primarily developed in partnership with Moody’s Action Gaming—have revitalized the genre, bringing new players into the video poker universe.

“Multi-player is arguably the one segment that is growing even faster than keno or single-hand poker in our portfolio today,” Johnson says. “The multi-hand segment has been one of the fastest-growing segments for some time in video poker. The moment that we collaborated with Ernie Moody and Action Gaming to start introducing those concepts, IGT created a new twist and a new excitement for video poker players.”

He adds that the multi-hand video poker genre has benefited operators as well. “The addition of Triple Play, Five Play, Ten Play and the rest allows that (video poker) unit to now compete on the same level from a coin-in perspective with slot machines. So operators are happy with the results that they’re seeing.”

Johnson says Ultimate X, one of the first games to introduce slot-style multipliers with multi-hand video poker to create a new game experience, has been extremely well received by players and casino operators for years. “We’ve created multiple evolutions of Ultimate X that continue to generate a lot of positive feedback,” he says.

“These types of games are becoming increasingly more popular,” comments Hard Rock’s Birtha. “We have not seen as much development in this space as we have seen in the non-video poker manufacturer pool, but many of the learnings regarding bonuses and multipliers are being implemented into this space to ensure the continued evolution of the product.”

IGT’s Johnson adds that the most recent innovations in multi-hand video poker, including the Wheel of Fortune version and 5 Card Plus 2 Poker, have done extremely well in the marketplace so far. “We continue to bring new innovations to the multi-hand space,” he says, “and not only in North America. Starting in 2023, we reintroduced video poker as a key offering back into the European market, and the PeakBarTop has been the cabinet that has been very much leading the way.”

IGT recently announced the placement of 500 PeakBarTop units across the Netherlands with key partner Holland Casino and a separate launch of the PeakBarTop, featuring the Game King X Multi-Game collection, at Gran Madrid/Casino Torrelodones in Spain.

Another factor Johnson says is fueling new video poker placements is the interest in the multi-hand games on the casino floor, specifically within IGT’s upright and slant cabinets. “In 2019 at G2E, we showcased something we hadn’t done in quite some time, unveiling new cabinets related to video poker. Cobalt 23, CrystalSlant Poker and PeakBarTop were all unveiled at G2E 2019. Just as with our PeakBarTop, we’ve seen a positive shift, with operators looking to bring on the Cobalt 23 and CrystalSlant Poker to replace a lot of their older product across their floors.”

While drawing in new players with the new upright form factors and new multi-hand games, IGT continues to serve the diehard video poker players who made the genre popular in the first place.

“We really appreciate our core video poker players,” Johnson says. “They are the ones that continue to keep up the excitement and the appreciation of video poker across the floor. What we’ve learned over the years is that we need to make sure that we continue to provide the right type of entertainment for those core players, while at the same time looking to introduce a new player set to poker as well.”

Video Poker Futures

Operators are divided on whether the phenomenon of shrinking video poker inventory poses an existential threat to the genre itself.

Paige at the South Point says that threat is real. “I definitely see a time when that (older) generation of video poker players either switch over to video reel or just fade away,” he says. “That is the trend, and that trend is not slowing.”

Frank disagrees. “The volatile nature of these newer video reel games can quickly drain your budget between the roller coaster of big bonus hits,” he says. “Video poker players cherish longer seat time for their dollar spent.”

He adds that technology could provide operators a means to keep video poker profitable, even with advantage play occurring. “There is some optimism that with new analytics, operators will be able to identify those highly skilled players and modify their rewards accordingly. If this is successful, it will also allow casinos to add more low-hold poker for average players.”

From IGT’s perspective, the company’s sales numbers and expansion into new markets provide proof that reports of video poker’s demise are premature.

“Over the last several years, we’ve definitely seen some changes in the customers’ buying habits related to video poker, and the changes have been positive,” says Johnson. “The conversations that we’re having with our customers on a regular basis indicate they see value in video poker—even more value than what they’ve seen in the past.”

“Video poker is an exciting product that provides a high-value gaming experience to guests who enjoy that type of game,” says Birtha. “Although the amount and type of product will vary by market, it should provide a stable foundation in your game mix from a design and execution standpoint.”

“Video poker is, and will always be, one of the foundations of our gaming industry,” says Frank. “Ever since their introduction a half century ago by the legendary Si Redd, these games have provided players with three elements that they couldn’t find on any other slot product: odds that were visible to the players, the ability of those players to use their skill and experience to improve their chances of winning, and increased time on device.

“Bottom line, let us hope video poker is around for at least another 50 years.”