Bitcoin Video Poker: Pay Tables, Strategy and Crypto Casinos (October 2026)

Bitcoin video poker is the same five-card draw game you find on casino machines, played with crypto at an online casino. It is one of the few casino games where the pay table tells you the exact long-run return: a full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better game returns 99.54% with perfect strategy, while short-pay versions of the same game can drop to 95% or lower. The crypto casinos below carry video poker in their lobbies as of October 2026; mBit, 7Bit and Stake each run a dedicated video poker section.

These brands are for international players only. All of them exclude the United States and the United Kingdom, and each has a longer restricted-country list in its terms. US readers can see our guide for US crypto players.

1. 1
   

   Roobet

   +10% rakeback boost for 24 hours, then rakeback every 30 minutes

   • 11 cryptocurrencies on multiple networks
   • 15 provably fair house games
   • 24/7 live support

   ★ 4.4/5 · Licence: Curaçao Gaming Authority OGL/2024/687/0427

   Visit siteRead review18+. No deposit-match welcome bonus. Each deposit must be wagered once before withdrawal. Not available in the US, UK, Australia or the Netherlands. T&Cs apply.
2. 2
   

   Winna

   VIP rewards, instant rakeback and status transfer

   • 13 supported cryptocurrencies
   • $20 minimum crypto withdrawal
   • Provably fair Winna Originals

   ★ 4.3/5 · Licence: Tobique Gaming Commission (operator-stated)

   Visit siteRead review18+. Eligibility, wagering and country restrictions apply. Not available in the US or UK. T&Cs apply.
3. 3
   

   mBit Casino

   Up to 4 BTC + 325 free spins over 3 deposits (100% up to 1 BTC, 100% up to 1.5 BTC, 125% up to 1.5 BTC)

   • Crypto-only cashier
   • Free spins on every welcome deposit
   • Large slot and live-dealer lobby

   ★ 4.5/5 · Licence: Curaçao Gaming Authority OGL/2024/1307/0748 (Scores55 Tech B.V.)

   Visit siteRead review18+. New players. Min deposit 30 USDT or crypto equivalent. 40x wagering on each bonus. T&Cs apply.
4. 4
   

   7Bit Casino

   325% up to 5.25 BTC + 250 free spins over 4 deposits

   • Over 10,000 games (operator figure)
   • Crypto and fiat payments
   • Weekly cashback up to 20%

   ★ 4.4/5 · Licence: Tobique Gaming Commission licence 0000091 (Saphirix Solutions SRL) for most international visitors; Canada-facing site: Curaçao Gaming Authority OGL/2023/147/0081 (Kika Technology B.V.)

   Visit siteRead review18+. New players. Min deposit 0.24 mBTC. 35x wagering, max bet set in the bonus terms in your account currency. T&Cs apply.
5. 5
   

   Stake

   No fixed welcome match; rewards come through the VIP programme, rakeback and regular promotions

   • Stake Originals (dice, crash, plinko, mines) with provably fair results
   • Casino and sportsbook on one crypto balance
   • Run by the team behind the former PrimeDice

   ★ 4.4/5 · Licence: Curaçao Gaming Authority OGL/2024/1451/0918 (Medium Rare N.V.)

   Visit siteRead review18+. T&Cs apply.

What is Bitcoin video poker?

Video poker is a single-player game against a pay table, not against other players or a dealer. You are dealt five cards, choose which to hold, draw replacements for the rest and get paid according to the final hand. The game uses a standard 52-card deck (53 in Joker Poker), shuffled by a random number generator before each hand.

“Bitcoin” only describes the payment side. Your stake comes from a crypto balance, and winnings are paid back to it. The game maths does not change: a 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns the same 99.54% whether you play in BTC, USDT or euros. What does change is how fast money moves and how your balance behaves when the coin’s price moves.

At crypto casinos you will meet three kinds of video poker:

• Provider games from studios such as Betsoft, Platipus or KA Gaming. mBit, for example, lists Jacks or Better by Platipus, Deuces Wild by Betsoft (BSG) and Bonus Poker by KA Gaming.
• In-house “originals” built by the casino. Stake keeps its own video poker game in its lobby, and in-house games are the ones most likely to be provably fair, so you can check each deal yourself.
• Multi-hand versions where one hold decision applies to 3, 5, 10 or more hands drawn from separate decks. They raise the amount you bet per deal, not the return.

A short history of video poker

Video poker grew out of the draw poker machines of the 1970s. Si Redd’s company SIRCOMA, renamed International Game Technology (IGT) in 1981, put its Draw Poker machine on casino floors in the late 1970s, and the game spread quickly through Nevada because players liked making decisions instead of just pulling a lever. Jacks or Better became the base game, and the variants that followed (Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, Joker Poker) mostly changed the pay table and added wild cards.

Online casinos copied the machines in the late 1990s and crypto casinos followed after Bitcoin arrived. The core of the game has hardly changed in decades, which is good news for players: the strategy and return figures worked out for land-based machines still apply online, as long as the pay table is the same.

How to play video poker, step by step

1. Choose the game and read the pay table. Before your first hand, check what a full house and a flush pay. Those two lines tell you most of what you need to know about the return (see the next section).
2. Set your bet. Pick the coin value and the number of coins. Many games pay a bonus on the royal flush only at the maximum number of coins, usually five.
3. Press Deal. You receive five cards face up.
4. Hold the cards you want to keep. Click each card to hold it. You can hold all five, none, or anything in between. Some games suggest a hold; treat that as a hint, not as the optimal play.
5. Press Draw. Every card you did not hold is replaced from the same deck.
6. Get paid. If the final hand appears on the pay table, the win is added to your balance. If not, you lose the bet.

Each hand takes a few seconds, so video poker is a fast game. That speed matters for your budget: even a small house edge adds up when you play hundreds of hands an hour.

How to read a pay table (and why 9/6 matters)

Players describe Jacks or Better machines by two numbers: what a full house and a flush pay per coin. A “9/6” game pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. A “8/5” game pays 8 and 5. Everything else on the table is usually the same, yet that one-coin difference on two hands moves the return by more than two percentage points.

Put into crypto terms: over 1 BTC of total bets, the expected cost is about 0.0046 BTC on a 9/6 game and 0.05 BTC on a 6/5 game, more than ten times as much for what looks like the same game. Always compare pay tables before you play, and if an online game publishes its RTP in the help screen, use that number. mBit’s own table-games lobby, for instance, shows a Joker Poker title from Voltent at 96.07% RTP, well below the best Joker Poker pay table.

The royal flush and the five-coin rule

On classic machines a royal flush pays 250 coins per coin at one to four coins, but jumps to 4,000 coins (800 per coin) at five coins. The 9/6 return of 99.54% assumes the five-coin payout. A royal flush comes about once every 40,000 hands with correct play, yet that jackpot carries roughly 2% of the game’s total return, so playing short coins on a game built this way costs you most of that 2%. Many online versions let you change the coin value instead of the coin count. Check whether the royal pays 800 per coin at your chosen setting, and lower the coin value rather than the number of coins if you want smaller bets.

How often each hand comes up

The probabilities for 9/6 Jacks or Better with optimal strategy show where the return really comes from. More than half of all hands lose, and the small, frequent wins (a high pair returns your stake, two pair doubles it) keep your balance alive between the bigger hands.

Read the table with the pay table in mind. A full house arrives about once every 87 hands, so cutting its pay from 9 to 8 removes roughly 1.15 percentage points of return on its own; dropping the flush from 6 to 5 removes about 1.1 more. That is exactly the gap between the 9/6 and 8/5 games.

Video poker variants and their returns

The table below lists the common variants with the pay table most often called “full pay” and its return with perfect strategy. Online casinos frequently run lower pay tables, so treat these as the best case, not the norm.

Jacks or Better

The base game. Any pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces pays even money, and everything above it follows the pay table shown earlier. It has the simplest strategy of all the variants and the lowest volatility, which makes it the best place to learn. mBit and 7Bit both name Jacks or Better in their video poker sections.

Bonus Poker

Bonus Poker keeps the Jacks or Better structure but pays more for certain four-of-a-kind hands: four aces pay 80 per coin and four 2s, 3s or 4s pay 40, against 25 for the other quads. To pay for that, the full house and flush drop to 8 and 5. Strategy is close to Jacks or Better.

Double Bonus and Double Double Bonus

These push even more of the return into four-of-a-kind hands. Double Bonus pays 160 per coin for four aces and lowers two pair to 1, which turns low pairs and two pair into very different decisions from Jacks or Better. Double Double Bonus adds extra pays for four aces or four low cards with a specific kicker. Both are high-volatility games: long losing runs are normal, and the full-pay Double Bonus table above 100% is rarely offered online.

Deuces Wild

All four 2s are wild, so the lowest paying hand is three of a kind, and the pay table adds wild royal flushes, five of a kind and four deuces (200 per coin). The full-pay version returns 100.76% with expert strategy, but the strategy differs sharply from Jacks or Better: you play hands by the number of deuces you hold. Short-pay Deuces Wild is common, so check the four-of-a-kind and full-house lines (5 and 3 on full pay).

Joker Poker

A 53-card deck with one joker as a wild card. The common version pays from a pair of kings upward and returns 100.65% on its best pay table. The 96.07% Joker Poker in mBit’s lobby shows how much an online version can differ from that best case.

Aces and Eights

Another Bonus Poker relative. It pays extra for four aces and four eights (80 per coin) and for four sevens (50). The 8/5 version returns 99.78%, which makes it one of the better pay tables if you can find it.

Basic strategy for Jacks or Better

Perfect strategy is what gets a game to its published return. The simplified list below, based on the standard simple strategy for 9/6 Jacks or Better, is close enough that most players lose only a small fraction of a percent compared with computer-perfect play. Start at the top and hold the first option that matches your five cards.

1. Royal flush, straight flush or four of a kind.
2. Four to a royal flush.
3. Three of a kind, a made straight, flush or full house.
4. Four to a straight flush.
5. Two pair.
6. A high pair (jacks or better).
7. Three to a royal flush.
8. Four to a flush.
9. A low pair (2s to 10s).
10. Four to an outside straight (open at both ends).
11. Two suited high cards.
12. Three to a straight flush.
13. Two unsuited high cards (if you have more than two, keep the lowest two).
14. A suited 10 with a jack, queen or king.
15. One high card.
16. Nothing: discard all five and draw.

Three rules surprise beginners. Break a made flush or straight when you hold four to a royal flush. Keep a low pair rather than three unsuited high cards. Never hold a kicker next to a pair, because it only reduces your chance of improving. Our beginner’s video poker guide walks through more example hands.

Deuces Wild strategy in brief

Deuces Wild needs its own approach because the wild 2s change which hands are worth chasing. Professional strategy charts sort every hand by how many deuces you were dealt. The key ideas for the full-pay game:

• Four deuces: hold the four deuces and draw one card. The hand already pays 200 per coin.
• Three deuces: hold only the deuces, unless the deal already gives you a wild royal flush or five of a kind.
• Two deuces: keep any made four of a kind or better and four to a royal flush; otherwise hold just the two deuces.
• One deuce: keep made hands of four of a kind or better, then four to a royal, then three to a royal, then a made full house, flush or straight, and finally the lone deuce.
• No deuces: with two pair, keep only one pair, because two pair pays nothing in Deuces Wild and one pair has more chances to become four of a kind.

The returns gap between correct and casual play is wider here than in Jacks or Better, so print a chart or use a trainer in demo mode before you play with coins.

Bankroll, speed and volatility

Speed turns a small edge into real money. Suppose you play 500 hands an hour at 0.0001 BTC per hand: that is 0.05 BTC an hour in total bets. On a 9/6 game the expected cost is about 0.00023 BTC an hour; on a 6/5 game it rises to 0.0025 BTC, roughly eleven times as much for the same time at the screen.

Volatility decides how far your balance swings around that average. Jacks or Better is the calmest of the main games. Double Bonus and Double Double Bonus move a larger share of the return into rare four-of-a-kind hands, so you need a bigger bankroll to ride out losing runs. Multi-hand play multiplies your bet by the number of hands while keeping the same return, so a 10-hand game at the same coin value needs about ten times the budget. A common rule of thumb is to keep several hundred bets in reserve for single-hand Jacks or Better and more for the bonus variants.

Video poker compared with other casino games

Video poker sits with blackjack as one of the best-value games in any casino lobby, but only on a good pay table and only when you play it correctly. A short-pay machine played by feel can return less than a typical slot.

Common video poker mistakes

• Ignoring the pay table. Two games with the same name can differ by several percentage points.
• Holding a kicker. Keeping an ace next to a pair of jacks lowers your return in standard Jacks or Better.
• Chasing inside straights. Four to an inside straight is usually worse than drawing to a single high card.
• Breaking a high pair for a four-card flush. The pair is the better hold in 9/6 Jacks or Better.
• Using Jacks or Better strategy on Deuces Wild. Wild cards change almost every decision.
• Playing faster than your budget. Use auto-limits or session timers if the casino offers them.

Video poker terms you will see

• Pay table: the list of hands and what each pays per coin.
• Full pay: the most generous common version of a variant’s pay table.
• Short pay: a reduced pay table for the same variant (for example 8/5 or 6/5 Jacks or Better).
• RTP (return to player): the long-run share of all bets paid back with perfect strategy. House edge is 100% minus RTP.
• Kicker: an unpaired card kept with a pair; in standard Jacks or Better it is a mistake.
• Hold and draw: keeping cards and replacing the rest; you get one draw per hand.
• Multi-hand: one held hand copied to several decks, each drawn separately.
• Volatility: how much results swing. Bonus-style games with big four-of-a-kind pays swing more than Jacks or Better.

Why play video poker with crypto (and what to watch)

The old case for Bitcoin video poker leaned on “anonymity” and “universal acceptance”. In 2026 the honest picture is more mixed.

• Speed: crypto deposits usually credit once the network confirms, and withdrawals skip the bank. The casinos on our list state their own processing targets; BitStarz, for example, aims to pay within an hour where possible.
• Small bets: coins split into tiny units, so low coin values are easy to set.
• Fees: network fees depend on the coin and how busy the chain is. Moving many small amounts in BTC can cost more in fees than a cheaper network.
• Price swings: a BTC balance can rise or fall in your own currency while you play. A stablecoin such as USDT avoids that, but carries its own issuer risk.
• Identity checks: most crypto casinos keep the right to ask for ID, especially before larger withdrawals. Do not count on staying anonymous.
• Protection: offshore licences from Curaçao or Anjouan give fewer player protections than a local regulator would. The Curaçao Gaming Authority does not mediate individual disputes; you complain to the casino, then to a CGA-certified ADR body.

Is crypto video poker fair?

A video poker game is fair when the deck is shuffled randomly before every hand and the pay table you see is the one the game uses. There are two ways to check that.

Provably fair games let you verify the shuffle. Before the hand, the casino commits to a hashed server seed; you supply or accept a client seed; after the hand, the casino reveals the server seed so you can confirm the deck order was fixed before you made your choices. This is mostly available on in-house games. See our provably fair guide for a step-by-step check.

Provider games rely on the studio’s random number generator testing and the casino’s licence. You cannot verify each hand yourself, so stick to known studios and casinos that publish their licence number. On machines and in software alike, there are no hot or cold cycles: each deal is independent of the last.

Video poker bonuses: the wagering maths

Most crypto welcome bonuses are built for slots, and many count video poker at a low rate or exclude it. mBit’s welcome bonus, for example, is wagered on slots only under its bonus terms. 7Bit’s package carries 35x wagering and BitStarz uses 40x, so check each casino’s game-contribution table before you take a match.

A worked example shows why. Take a 0.005 BTC bonus at 35x: you need 0.175 BTC of qualifying bets. With video poker counting 100%, a 9/6 game would cost you about 0.0008 BTC on average over that turnover, leaving most of the bonus as value. At a 10% contribution you would need 1.75 BTC of video poker bets, costing about 0.008 BTC on average, more than the bonus is worth. Where the contribution is 0%, the bonus does nothing for you at the video poker tables.

Cashback and rakeback suit video poker players better, because they pay on losses or volume with few game restrictions. 7Bit lists weekly cashback up to 20%, and Stake rewards play through its VIP programme. Our welcome bonus guide covers contribution tables and maximum-bet rules.

How to choose a Bitcoin video poker casino

1. Check eligibility first. Your country must not be on the casino’s restricted list.
2. Look for the pay tables. Open a few games in demo mode, if offered, and read the full house and flush lines before you deposit.
3. Prefer published RTPs. Lobbies that show RTP per game, as mBit’s table-games section does, make comparison easy.
4. Read the bonus contribution table. If video poker counts 0%, the welcome bonus is not for you.
5. Check the licence. Look the licence number up on the regulator’s site and note the complaint route.
6. Test a small withdrawal. Before you build a large balance, cash out a small amount to your own wallet to see how the process works.

For more card games against the house, see our Bitcoin poker page and table games hub. Full brand details are in our mBit review, 7Bit review and Stake review.

Video poker is fast, and that makes it easy to play longer than planned. Set a budget in your own currency, use the casino’s deposit limits, and read our responsible gambling page. Gamblers Anonymous (gamblersanonymous.org) runs free meetings worldwide.

Bitcoin video poker FAQ

How much money do I need to play video poker with Bitcoin?

Very little. Crypto casinos set a minimum deposit, for example mBit asks for 30 USDT or the crypto equivalent for its welcome offer, and video poker coin values usually go down to fractions of a cent. Keep enough balance to play at the maximum coin count if the royal flush bonus needs it.

Can you beat video poker or make a living from it?

Only a few full-pay games, such as full-pay Deuces Wild at 100.76%, return more than 100%, and only with perfect strategy over a very large number of hands. Those pay tables are rare online, so for almost all players video poker is a game with a small house edge, not an income.

Are video poker games hot or cold like slots?

No. Each hand is dealt from a freshly shuffled deck, so earlier results have no effect on the next deal. Streaks happen by chance and cannot be predicted.

How many cards are used in video poker?

A standard 52-card deck is shuffled before every hand. Joker Poker adds one joker for 53 cards, and multi-hand games use a separate deck for each hand.

What is the RTP of video poker?

It depends on the variant and pay table. 9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.54% with perfect strategy, 8/5 returns 97.30% and 6/5 returns 95.00%. Read the pay table or the game’s help screen before you play.

Can you cheat a video poker game?

No. Online games use a random number generator, and provably fair games let you check that the deck was fixed before you played. Software that promises to predict cards is a scam.

Should I always bet maximum coins?

On games where the royal flush pays 800 per coin only at five coins, yes: playing fewer coins gives up most of the royal’s share of the return. If you want smaller bets, lower the coin value instead of the coin count.

What is the worst hand to keep in video poker?

In Jacks or Better, a common costly mistake is keeping a kicker with a pair or holding a single low card. When you have nothing worth holding, discarding all five cards is the correct play.

Can you really earn money playing crypto games?

You can win money in a session, and wins are paid in crypto, but no casino game is a way to earn a steady income. Even a full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54% with perfect strategy, so 1 BTC of total bets costs about 0.0046 BTC on average, and short-pay tables cost more. Treat any stake as the price of entertainment and set a limit before you start.