Looking For Full-Pay

A full-pay table will tell you what the game will pay off when you play both at the one unit and five unit levels. There are certainly advantages to playing at the five-unit level.

You will only get the full payout on a Royal Flush, for example, if you play the maximum amount. That's five units, for the most part. To do this you would click to play a maximum bet on the interface. In the opinion of many, it makes the most sense to play the maximum amount every time.

if you are on a video poker game where the minimum bet is 25 cents, you would then be betting $1.25 per hand. If it's $1, you're betting $5.

If you do not get a table that indicates full-pay, it might be "short pay," which generally makes it not as good a deal for the player.

it is recommended that players take a look at the full payout table before commences play. The differences are noticeable.

Let's use an example. In "short pay" games in the Jacks or Better realm, you would get paid eight units on a one-unit bet for a full house, and five units on a one unit bet for the flush. To put this in perspective, on a full-pay game, you would be paid nine units on a one-unit bet for the full house, and six units on a one-unit bet for the flush.

Games with a short pay table typically carry a house advantage that could be up to six times that of a full-pay table game in Jacks or Better.

What you might want to be on the lookout for is a payout table that "funnels upward," that is, decreases the amounts of the payout on the more common winning hands (one pair, two pair, three of a kind), while increasing the payouts on hands like the straight flush or Royal Flush. This is something of a cosmetic move and may in fact be there for the purposes of deceiving the player. It may be advisable to bypass these kinds of games for something more favorable.