Two video poker machines can sit side by side, look identical, and have meaningfully different odds. The only place that difference shows up is a small paytable grid most players never actually read before inserting money.
Full Pay vs. Short Pay: What the Names Mean
A “9/6” Jacks or Better machine pays 9 coins for a full house and 6 for a flush, per coin bet at max wager, that’s the full-pay, best-available version of the game. An “8/5” machine pays 8 and 5 on those same two hands. The rest of the paytable is usually identical between versions, which is exactly what makes the difference easy to miss.
Why Full House and Flush Specifically
Those two hands occur often enough to meaningfully affect the machine’s overall return, unlike rarer hands like four of a kind or a straight flush where a payout tweak barely moves the math. Cutting the full house and flush payouts is the single most common way a casino floor quietly offers a worse game without changing anything else about how the machine looks or plays.
The Real Difference in Numbers
A full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better machine, played with correct strategy, returns about 99.5%, a house edge under 0.5%. Drop to 8/5, and the return falls to roughly 97.3%, more than doubling the house’s edge, on a machine that otherwise looks the same and often sits in the same bank of cabinets.
Where to Actually Check
The paytable is usually one button press away on the machine’s info screen, or printed directly on the glass above the reels on older cabinets. It takes ten seconds to check the full house and flush numbers before your first hand, and it’s the single most useful habit in this entire game.
Other Jacks or Better Paytables Worth Recognising
The same idea runs through the rest of the family. With correct strategy a 9/5 machine returns about 98.45%, an 8/6 machine about 98.39% and a 7/5 machine about 96.15%. The full-pay 9/6 version stays the benchmark, and every step below it is a cost that repeats on every hand you play.
What Correct Strategy Means Here
Those returns assume the best discard on every single hand. Playing by feel gives some of the return back, which is why the trainer on this site grades each hold against published strategy instead of against how the hand happened to turn out.
A Quick Check Before the First Hand
Read the two numbers for the full house and the flush, confirm the game name matches what the paytable actually pays, and compare with the machine next to you. If the numbers are lower than 9 and 6, a better machine may be sitting a few steps away in the same bank.
What the Percentage Points Cost
Play 1,000 hands at five 25-cent coins and you wager 1,250 dollars. At the full-pay 99.54% return the expected loss is about 5.75 dollars; at the 8/5 return of roughly 97.30% it is about 33.75. The machines look the same and play the same, yet the second costs nearly six times as much for the same evening at the cabinet, which is why the ten seconds spent on the paytable pays for itself.
Why Most Sessions Finish Below the Average
A large part of the 99.54% full-pay return comes from the royal flush, which arrives roughly once in 40,000 hands. Most sessions never see one, so a typical evening finishes below the long-run average and the occasional royal pulls the average back up. That is why the paytable matters even though no single session will ever feel like an exact percentage.
Treat the paytable as the price tag on the machine. Two cabinets in the same row can quote different prices for the very same hand, and you are usually the only person on the floor who will compare them before playing, so a short look at two or three machines is time well spent before you commit a single coin.
Questions About Video Poker Paytables
What does 9/6 mean on a Jacks or Better machine?
It is the pay for the two hands that move the return most: 9 coins for a full house and 6 for a flush, per coin bet at the maximum wager. An 8/5 machine pays 8 and 5 on the same hands, and the rest of the paytable is usually identical, which is why the difference is easy to miss.
How much does a short-pay machine actually cost?
With correct strategy a full-pay 9/6 machine returns about 99.5% and an 8/5 machine about 97.3%, so the house edge more than doubles. The 9/5 and 8/6 versions sit near 98.4%, and a 7/5 machine falls to about 96.15%. Every step below 9/6 is a cost that repeats on every hand.
Where do I find a machine’s paytable?
Usually one button press away on the info screen, or printed on the glass above the reels on older cabinets. Read the full house and flush numbers before the first hand and confirm the game name matches the paytable shown.
Does a full-pay machine guarantee a good session?
No. The return is a long-run average, and a large part of it comes from the royal flush, which arrives roughly once in 40,000 hands. Most sessions never see one and finish below the average, which is why the paytable matters even though no single evening feels like an exact percentage.