How To Play Deuces

Whether playing the game with friends at home or at the casino at a table or a video poker machine, Deuces Wild offers a fun alternative to basic poker. How to Play Deuces Wild is a game similar to poker, in that it uses the tried and true poker hand ranking system, but it adds the element of a “wild” card, in this case the “two” card. Some of the deuces wild tips are simple common poker sense, while others seem to fly in the face of common sense. But if you keep these tips in mind the next time you play Deuces Wild online or in your favorite land-based casino, you’ll play better and extract more money from the casino. Ten video poker deuces wild tips. When playing Deuces Wild all deuces in the deck are wild and can be substituted for any card's rank and suit. Because this makes it a lot easier to get big hands the payout scales are greatly reduced: Royal Flush (no wild cards) - 250x (with bonuses of 4000x or more when betting max) Four Deuces - 200x; Royal Flush (with wild cards) - 20x or 25x. How to Play Deuces Wild. Deuces Wild is version of 5 Card Draw Table Video Poker. It differs from regular video poker in that the four 2 cards are known as 'deuces', and act similarly to wild cards or jokers, being able to substitute any card - both in value and suit.

Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is also sometimes called Bonus Deuces Wild. Like many video poker variations, it can be thought of as a bit of a hybrid. Bonus Poker is normally considered a variation of Jacks or Better with bonus payouts for various 4 of a kind hands. Bonus Deuces Wild is the same thing, only instead of having Jacks or Better as its base game, it has Deuces Wild as its base game.

This page offers a detailed breakdown of how to play Bonus Deuces Wild. We’ve also included an analysis of the pay tables and the house edge for the various versions of the game that are available. Finally, we include strategy charts and notes about where to play online for free or for real money.

How to Play Deuces Wild Bonus Poker

The gameplay in Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is no different than it is in any other video poker game. You start by deciding how many coins you want to bet. As with most VP games, you can choose to play for anywhere between 1 and 5 coins.

But you should always bet 5 coins, no matter what.

The best paying hand in the game is the royal flush, and it pays off at 800 to 1—but only if you’ve made the max coin bet. If you bet 4 coins or fewer, the royal flush only pays off at 250 to 1. A royal flush only shows up once every 40,000 hands or so, but the payout for the hand is so high that it makes a noticeable difference in your overall payback percentage.

Once you’ve placed your bet, you’re dealt a hand of 5 cards. Keep in mind that Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is a gambling machine. When we way that you’re dealt a hand of 5 cards, we’re talking about animation on a computer monitor. But one of the big differences between video poker and slot machines is the use of a deck of cards.

• Here’s why that’s important:

On a slot machine, you get paid off based on what combination of symbols appear on the screen. But you have no way to know what the odds of getting a particular symbol are. You also have no decisions to make which can affect your odds.

A slot machine is a completely opaque game where you insert money and sometimes get money back. You have no way of knowing what the inner workings of the game are.

But a video poker machine, on the other hand, bases its symbols on playing cards. And they base the probability of getting any of those symbols on a deck of playing cards, too. Any particular card has a probability of 1/52 of showing up.

The major one is that, since the payoffs for the game are based on poker hand rankings, we can calculate the payback percentage for the machine. We’ll talk about that more in the section on probability and pay tables below, but for now, the main thing to know is that we have the information we need to calculate the house edge for Bonus Deuces Wild.

Once you get your 5 cards, you get to decide if you want to keep all of them or some of them. The cards you decide to get rid of are replaced by the computer, and your final hand ranking determines how much you get paid in winnings.

This is an important distinction, too. Not only do we know the math behind the game, but we have decisions to make. These decisions can affect our return on the machine.

Here’s a simple, absurd example of how incorrect play could cost you a lot of money on a video poker machine.

Let’s say you’re dealt a natural royal flush. You still have the option of discarding any or all of those cards. If you do so, you give up an 800 to 1 payoff. No matter what happens, you’re going to come out way behind where you would have come out if you had just held onto your natural royal flush.

Every hand has 32 possible ways to play it, based on which cards and how many you keep and/or discard. That might sound like a lot, but it’s not too hard to break it down:

You can keep all 5 cards. That’s one choice.

You can discard all 5 cards. That another choice, for a total of 2.

You can discard 4 cards and keep 1 card. There are 5 different ways to do that, based on which cards you keep and which one you throw away.

And so on, all the way down to keeping a single card and discarding the other 4.

Of all 32 of these choices, on any given hand, only one choice will have the highest expected value. The expected value is the probability of winding up with a given payoff averaged across all the possibilities and factoring in the likelihood of each.

Here’s the other distinguishing characteristic of this game, and you probably already figured it out.

The 2s count as wild cards. They can stand in for a card that you need in order to complete a hand. This makes the play of this game considerably different from what you’d expect playing something like Jacks or Better. The wild cards make it more likely that you’ll have a stronger hand.

Once you get your final hand, you get paid off based on the pay table. It lists all the possible final hands along with how much they pay off. We cover the details of Deuces Wild Bonus Poker pay tables in the next section

The pay table for Deuces Wild Bonus Poker will be familiar to anyone who’s played Deuces Wild and also to anyone who’s played Bonus Poker. Here’s an example of one of the best versions of this game:

One of the things that Bonus Poker players will notice is that the bonus payoffs are similar but not identical to what they would be in a normal Bonus Poker game. In that version of video poker, you get bonus payoffs based on various 4 of a kind hands.

But in Deuces Wild Bonus Poker, the bonus payoffs are for 5 of a kind hands. And that makes sense, since there are so many wild cards. The 4 of a kind comes up at least 6% of the time, or about once every 16 or 17 hands, so it wouldn’t make the casino much sense to provide a bonus payout for that.

The pay table listed above has a payback percentage of 99.86% when played with optimal strategy. That means the house edge is a tiny 0.14%, making this one of the best games in the casino. The payback percentage is a mathematical estimate of how much the casino expects to pay back in winnings to the player over the long run. Any time it’s under 100% (which is almost all the time), the casino will eventually win in the end.

Other pay tables are less generous and have lower payback percentages. Here’s an example of a pay table with a 98.8% payback percentage:

You’ll notice only 2 changes to this pay table, actually. The payout for a straight flush is increased to 13 to 1, which seems really generous. But the payout for a full house is reduced from 4 to 1 to 3 to 1. That’s enough to compensate for the bigger straight flush payoff AND increase the overall house edge.

You’ll find other pay tables, too—some are less generous than this one, even. As with other Deuces Wild games, the payoffs that change vary from game to game. It’s not like Jacks or Better, where you can almost instantly ascertain the payback percentage by looking at the payoffs for the full house and flush.

Deuces Wild Bonus Poker Strategy Charts

Here’s the basic strategy to follow when playing this game. It’s a hierarchy of hands from best to worst. You’ll start at the top and work your way down until you find a hand on the payoff table that matches the hand you’ve been dealt. Those are the cards you’ll keep.

On a Deuces Wild game, you start by looking at whether or not your hand contains any deuces. You’ll notice that under no circumstances will you ever discard a deuce.

• 4 deuces with an ace
• 4 deuces – discard the 5^th card and hope for an ace

• Any 5 of a kind or a wild royal flush
• 4 of a kind
• 3 deuces – discard the other 2 cards and hope to improve

• Any straight flush, 5 of a kind, or 4 of a Kind
• 4 to a wild royal flush
• 3 of a kind
• 2 deuces – discard the other 3 cards and hope to improve

• Any full house, straight flush, 5 of a kind, or 4 of a kind
• 4 to a wild royal flush
• Any flush
• Any 3 of a Kind
• Any 4 to a straight flush
• Any 3 to a wild royal flush
• Straight
• Any 4 to a flush
• Any 3 to a straight flush
• A deuce – discard the other 4 cards and hope to improve

• Any full house or royal flush
• Any 4 to a natural royal flush
• Any 4 of a kind
• Any flush or straight flush
• Any 3 of a kind
• Any 4 to a straight flush
• Any 3 to a natural royal flush
• Straight
• Any 4 to a flush
• Any 2 pair
• Any pair
• Any 3 to a straight flush
• Any 2 to a natural royal flush
• Any 3 to a straight flush
• Any 2 to a natural royal flush
• Discard everything and start over

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that under no circumstances will you ever discard a deuce. You’ll also probably notice that this strategy isn’t at all hard to learn.

Deuces Wild Bonus isn’t one of the most common video poker variations to be found online. Most of our top-ranked casinos have an excellent selection of video poker games, however, and some of them do have this variation.

Deuces Wild Bonus Poker is an interesting variation that combines Deuces Wild with Bonus Poker. If you like chasing 5 of a kinds, this is the game for you, because those are the hands with the big bonus payouts.

How To Play Deuces Wild

In this post, we’re going to cover how to get started playing Deuces Wild video poker. We’ll breakdown the basics, common pay tables, tips for winning real money, and more! Keep scrolling to find out everything you need to know about Deuces Wild.

Deuces Wild Is More Complicated than Jacks or Better

Deuces Wild is an example of the 2nd type of video poker game in our broad categorizations (non-wild card games and wild card games).

The strategy for Deuces Wild is more complicated than the strategy for Jacks or Better in multiple ways. For one thing, it’s harder to distinguish between paytables.

For another thing, the playing strategy changes dramatically because of the 4 wild cards in the deck.

But Deuces Wild can offer you something you can’t expect from Jacks or Better:

A positive expectation.

If you choose the right paytable and play with the appropriate strategy, you can achieve an edge over the casino with full pay Deuces Wild.

And, even I you can’t find full pay Deuces Wild, you can get close to a break-even game with “not so ugly” Deuces Wild.

Most of the rest of this post explains the differences between these two.

Common Deuces Wild Video Poker Pay Tables

Here are 2 examples of a Deuces Wild video poker tables, compared and contrasted:

It looks like version 2 is the game to go with, at least at first glance, right?

After all, you get 4 extra coins for a straight flush than you would on version 1, and all you’re giving up in exchange for that is a single coin payout on the 4 of a kind.

You’re also getting a couple of extra coins on the 5 of a kind.

But looks can be deceiving.

Version 1 is a “full pay” Deuces Wild video poker paytable. The payback percentage, if you play every hand optimally, is 100.76% on such a paytable.

Version 2 isn’t even close – it’s not even the so-called “not so ugly” version. The payback percentage for that paytable – even with perfect strategy – is only 97.08%.

What causes such a huge discrepancy?

It’s that single coin difference in payouts on the 4 of a kind.

If you’re not used to playing video poker with wild cards, you’ll think that a 4 of a kind is a really rare hand.

But in Deuces Wild, where you have 4 wild cards in the deck, you’ll wind up with 4 of a kind over 6% of the time – that’s once in every 15 hands or so.
In terms of expected return, the 5-coin payout accounts for almost 1/3 of the game’s payback.

The payout for version 2 reduces that amount to 1/4 of the game’s payback.
A straight flush and a 5 of a kind come up so much less often that the increased payout just doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Not So Ugly Deuces Wild Pay Tables

Here’s a much more common Deuces Wild paytable that still offers an excellent expected return:

You’ll notice lots of small differences in payouts – this is another reason that Deuces Wild is so much more complicated than Jacks or Better.

You get a single coin more on the 5 of a kind, but we’ve already talked about how that’s not such a big deal.

You also get another coin on the straight flush, but again, this isn’t such a big deal.

And that reduction to a 4-coin payout on a 4 of a kind is still a big deal.

But the increased payouts on some of the lower ranked hands are critical.

Increasing the payout from 3 to 4 for a full house is a big deal.

And increasing the payout from 2 to 3 for a flush is also a big deal.

When all is said and done, the expected return for not so ugly Deuces Wild (also often called NSUD) is 99.73%, which is about as close to a break-even game as you could ask for. In fact, if you factor in the comps and rebates from the slots club, you might still even have a positive return for this game.

How Do You Get this Expected Return for these Deuces Wild Games?

The payback percentage for any gambling machine is the total of the expected value of each outcome.

Expected value is just the product of the probability of getting a result multiplied by the amount you’ll win.

Here’s how that looks in full pay Deuces Wild:

The most likely result on any random hand is nothing, which happens about 54.7% of the time. Since that has a payout of $0, you’d multiply 54.7% by $0 to get the expected value – 0.

You’ll wind up with 3 of a kind often, too – 28.5% of the time. Since that pays out at even money, you multiply that 1 by 28.5% to get 28.5%.

A straight is far rarer – 5.6% of the time. But it pays off at 2 for 1, so you multiply 5.6% by 2 to get 11.2.

A flush is even rarer than a straight – you only see a flush once out of every 60 hands. That’s 1.7% of the time, and since it pays off at 2 for 1, the expected value for that payout is 2 multiplied by 1.7%. or 3.4%.

A full house – in Deuces Wild – actually turns up slightly more often than a flush – 2.1% of the time.

And the payoff is more – 3 for 1.

3 multiplied by 2.1% is 6.3%,.

Now, though, you get to see the power of the 4 of a kind. That hand comes up 6.5% of the time, and it pays off at 5 for 1.

6.5% multiplied by 5 is 32.5%.

All the other hands – straight flush, 5 of a kind, wild royal flush, and 4 deuces – come up between 0.02% and 0.42% of the time, respectively. The only exception is the natural royal flush, which only turns up once in every 45,000 hands or so.

It’s 10 times less likely to come up than 4 deuces, but the payoff is 4 times greater, too.

When you add all these expectations together, you get the overall expectation for the game – in this case, 100.76%.

Deuces Wild Video Poker Strategy Tips

Here are some tips for how to get closer to the optimal strategy for playing each hand in Deuces Wild video poker. This won’t get you to the top payback percentage, but it will get you closer to that then just trying to guess which cards to hold and which cards to throw away.

1. You’ll never hold on to a single card – unless it’s a deuce. In other video poker variations, you’ll sometimes hold onto a high card, like a jack or higher. You never do that in Deuces Wild because it doesn’t help you.
2. You’ll always hold onto any deuces you have. No matter what the pay table looks like, you’ll never discard a deuce when playing Deuces Wild. Some novices might think it’s okay to discard a deuce to try to hit the natural royal flush. That’s a mistake. Don’t do it.
3. If you have one deuce, you’ll never hold just one card with it. Again, there’s really no benefit to having a high card along with a single deuce. High cards just don’t matter much in Deuces Wild.
4. You should always keep a pair if your alternative is a 4-card flush or straight.
5. You should also NEVER hold 2 pair. Just discard either pair – doesn’t matter which one, since high cards don’t matter. Focus hard on the 4 of a kind. If you stay focused on those 4 of a kind hands, you’ll have a hard time making bad decisions in Deuces Wild.

Conclusion

Deuces Wild is a great game because it offers 4 wild cards on every hand, but this changes your strategy dramatically.

How To Play Deuces Cards

But it also has some versions with some of the highest expected returns in the casino. Even if you can’t find full pay Deuces Wild, you can sometimes find NSUD, or not-so-ugly Deuces.

How To Play Deuces Wild Poker

Either way, it’s well worth learning how to play.

How To Play Deuces Wild Hold'em Fold Em