Chapter 04 — Strategy Library
Optimal Strategy Charts
Every variant we publish, every hold you should make, and the exact expected value underneath each of the 32 possible decisions. No black boxes. No "trust us." The math is in the matrix.
Index
Charts by Variant
Jump directly to the variant you play. Every chart below shows the recommended hold for all 32 possible decisions, with the underlying EV visible to the right of each row.
-
01
Full-Pay 9/6 Jacks or Better
The reference variant. 9/6 JoB returns 99.54% with optimal play — the chart every other strategy is benchmarked against.
Most drilled -
02
Full-Pay Deuces Wild
The natural-wild chart. Every deuce transforms the decision tree; the EV matrix here accounts for 2,598,960 distinct five-card deals.
AP-grade -
03
Bonus Poker & Double Double Bonus
Aces matter more here. The chart adjusts the kicker hierarchy in 11 of the 32 decision rows compared to vanilla JoB.
4 sub-variants -
04
Joker Poker, Super Aces & Pick'em
The wild-card variants and the lesser-known Pick'em tree, where the 32-decision matrix has to be rebuilt from scratch to accommodate the 53rd card.
3 sub-variants
Don't see your variant? Browse the full 47-variant pay-table database →
How to read a chart
Every play, with the EV underneath.
A "strategy chart" in most places is a two-column table: if you have this, hold that. Useful, but it asks you to take the recommendation on faith. On GoVideoPoker.net, every chart is published as a full 32-decision expected-value matrix — the same number an AP player would write down on a bar napkin after an hour with the pay table.
The 32 decisions come from the 2⁵ = 32 possible subsets of a five-card hand. For every one of those subsets, our engine enumerates every draw from the remaining 47 cards, weighs each outcome by its probability, and writes down the long-run return. The recommended hold is whichever of the 32 subsets scores highest. The EV is what it scores.
That second column — the EV — is the differentiator. When two holds look close (a low pair versus a four-flush, a kicker trade-off in Bonus Poker), the EV column tells you exactly how many coins per hand the right play is worth. Over 400 hands per session, the average user practices in our trainer, those fractional differences add up to the difference between a 99.54% game and a 98.20% game.
Nothing on this page is generated by a large language model guessing what looks plausible. The matrices are hand-derived, cross-checked against Bob Dancer's and Jean Scott's published references, and re-verified against Wizard of Odds methodology. When we update a chart, the previous version is archived with its timestamp so you can audit the change history.
If you've never read an EV matrix before, start with Full-Pay 9/6 Jacks or Better — it's the simplest variant and the chart fits on a single page. Once you see how the 32 decisions are scored, every other chart in this library will read the same way.
Editorial standard
How a chart gets from the math desk to this page.
Every strategy chart on GoVideoPoker.net goes through a four-step verification process before it ships. The site has used the same protocol since 2007 — long enough that two community-college gaming courses now use the published methodology as prerequisite reading.
-
1
Pay-table hand-entry
The exact coin returns for every hand — from Royal Flush down to a pair of Jacks — are typed in by hand from a photographed casino glass, not copy-pasted from another site.
-
2
Independent EV derivation
Our engine enumerates the full 2,598,960-deal space and computes the EV of each of the 32 hold decisions from first principles — no lookup table from a third party.
-
3
Cross-check against published references
Bob Dancer's Winners Guide, Jean Scott's Frugal Gambler companion math, and Wizard of Odds' analyzer output. Disagreements are investigated, not averaged.
-
4
Drill sample audit
Charts are loaded into the public trainer and exercised across at least 10,000 simulated hands per variant. Any deviation from theoretical EV above 0.15% flags the chart for review.
By the numbers
What "longest-running free strategy library" actually looks like.
17years
Continuous publication
Founded February 2007 by Daniel R. Mercer. Every pay table and strategy chart has been continuously maintained since — the longest-running free public video poker database on the web.
312pay tables
Verified & cross-checked
47 video poker variants across 312 distinct pay tables. Each one hand-verified against Bob Dancer's, Jean Scott's, and Wizard of Odds methodology.
41.7million
Simulated trainer hands
Drilled by users in the browser-based trainer since launch. Average user practices 412 hands per session before moving on to a new variant.
180thousand+
Registered trainer accounts
23% of users return within 7 days to drill a new variant or tighten a chart. The trainer installs to home screen as a PWA and works offline.
Cited in Stanford's Probability Through Games (2019 syllabus, week 8). Featured in the 2018, 2020, and 2023 American Casino Guide reader polls as Best Free Strategy Resource.
Next step
Open the charts. Drill the hands. Bookmark the page.
Every variant in the index above links to its full 32-decision EV matrix. If you'd rather drill hands against the chart than read it, the free in-browser trainer runs every variant on this page and tells you, on every hand, what the chart would have you hold.
No email required to use the trainer. No wagering. Strategy pages carry zero advertising — ad inventory is confined to casino-offer pages so the math content stays uncompromised.