| What you have | What you do | Why you do it |
|---|---|---|
| Two Pair or better | Keep the winning cards, discard the rest. | With Two Pair, Three Of A Kind, or better, you'll lose more than you win if you break them up. I haven't done the math for three of a kind vs. 4/5 of a flush, but winning 3x outright is hard to beat. |
| 4/5 of a Flush | Toss the non-Flush card, even if it's part of an Outside Straight, or even a winning Jacks Or Better. | The weighted score on 4/5 of a Flush is at least 10 points higher than anything else. And if Jacks Or Better is enough for you, against a Flush with a 5x return, why are you even gambling? |
| Outside Straight | Keep the Outside Straight, even if it means getting rid of half of a pair. | An Outside Straight has at least 8 points on Pair And A Partner. But it's not as good as a Flush, so if you have Jacks Or Better, you'd be forgiven if you keep it. Just don't tell your hardcore gambling buddies. |
| A Pair And A Partner | Keep the pair, plus one other card. It doesn't matter which. | The biggest surprise of this method is that you're better off to keep a partner, even though you reduce your chances of Three Of A Kind. The added chances for Two Pair outweigh the loss. Other cheat sheet sites say don't keep the partner... but those sites belong to the online casinos. Conflict of interest? Maybe not... |
| Inside Straight | Keep the Inside Straight, even you discard a face card. | Mama always said "don't deal to an inside straight", but this is Video Poker, not Old West five-men-with-guns poker. The computer doesn't have a gun in its boot... just a cold mathematical certainty that it will beat you. |
| 2 or 3 Face Cards | Keep 'em. | Your odds are now surprisingly low, but if you're lucky, maybe you'll break even this hand. |
| 3/5 of a Flush | Toss the other two, even if one of them is a face card. | This is the only time that the method looks at the odds of drawing two cards to complete a winning hand. It's a desperation move, but that's why they call it "gambling". |
| 1 Face Card | Keep it, you don't have much other choice. | It wouldn't be so bad if you had human opponents, but you can't bluff a video console. |
| Nothin' | Toss 'em all, why not? | Who knows... maybe there's a Straight Flush waiting in the next five cards! |
This method was created by Robert Brooks, and this text is copyright © 2001, Robert Brooks. You may reproduce it for non-commercial purposes, but only if you include this copyright notice. If possible, please include a link to Little Cutie Consulting. Thank you!
Just a little page thrown together by Robert Brooks, robertb@dixie-chicks.com.
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Cheat sheet created: 09/11/2002
Last Update: 06/04/2004