Multi-hand poker allows players to put into play multiple hands per game, compared with the one hand per game that conventional video poker plays. These multi-hand versions of popular poker games use random drawing from a common deck to determine results for all hands being played by a gambler at one time. Multi-hand poker games look on the screen like a bank of video poker machines with one hand displayed for each of several ranks, such as five hands or ten hands.
How to Play Multi-Hand Poker - Basic Rules
Playing multi-hand poker online works almost exactly like any other type of video poker you can find in an . First, you choose which variety of poker you want to handle, like Jacks or Better or Bonus Poker. Then you decide how many hands of this kind of poker you want the computer to deal you at one time.
After you've made these decisions, you set your bet amount and click a button to play. This deals the cards.
In multi-hand poker, you get the same cards in every single hand. It looks like you are playing five (or however many) separate hands, but it's really the same five hands because they all started with the same combination of cards.
You decide which of these shared cards to hold and which to discard just like normal. Then, you get new cards for all of your hands to reveal your final poker hands.
Because all of your hands are the same, you will typically have a few losing hands no matter what you do. This makes winning hands in multi-hand poker more rare than in traditional video poker, so wins are worth more to account for this.
The specifics about how much you win depend on the variation of poker you are playing, but in general, you'll win more for each rank of poker you achieve because more cards are involved.
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Is Multi-Hand Poker Based on Skill or Chance?
Multi-hand poker is based partly on skill and partly on chance, just like other types of poker and casino games.
The element of skill comes down to deciding which cards to keep and which to discard after you receive your first set of cards. Good strategy can help you determine the best course of action to maximize your expected value (EV).
After you decide to hold certain cards and the computer deals you new ones, there’s nothing else for you to do. The rest of the game is purely based on chance as random number generation determines if you improve your hand and what new cards you receive.
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Where Is the Best Place To Play Online?
The best place to play multi-hand poker online is at a reputable casino. One way to ensure this is to look for sites with multi-hand poker games that have been certified as fair by independent auditing companies. For example, multi-hand poker payouts at are verified as fair by independent testing group eCOGRA.
Another thing to consider when choosing where to play is bonus offerings. Because multi-hand poker has a higher house edge than some other casino games, it might make sense to play in order to earn back some of your losses. For instance, a welcome bonus could match a portion of your first deposit and give you extra money to play even more multi-hand poker.
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Which Multi-Hand Poker Variations Are There & How Do They Differente?
Many different variations of multi-hand poker exist. While the rules remain fundamentally the same across these various games, slight alterations change the way multi-hand poker plays and what you stand to gain by hitting five-of-a-kind or a royal flush.
Jacks or Better
The foundation of multi-hand poker variations, Jacks or Better is the version in which you must hit at least a pair of jacks to qualify for a hand. Most other varieties of multi-hand poker offer better low-end pay tables.
Wild Casino Games I Tried on Their Betting Site - #2 Surprised MeWith five hands per game and max bet ranging from one to five coins per hand, the top prize for a royal flush is 800 coins. Hitting a royal flush on a five-coin bet nets you 4000 coins. You can also see the payouts for straight flushes, four-of-a-kind, full houses, and more below.
- Royals: 800 coins
- Str eight: 250
- 4-of-a-kind: 125-250 coins (depending on rank)
- Full house: 60-125
- Flush: 50-90
- Straight: 40-80
- Three-of-a-kind: 25-50
- Two pairs: 20-40
- Pairs of Jacks or Better: 10-20
- Any other hand: 5-15
Bonus Poker
An improvement over basic Jacks or Better multi-hand poker, Bonus Poker offers the best low-end pay table out of all these variants.
With a maximum five-coin wager, the top prize for landing a royal flush is 800 coins. Hitting that bet max royal flush pays out 4000 coins. See all the payouts for straight flushes, four-of-a-kind, full houses, and more below.
- Royals: 800 coins
- Str eight: 250
- 4-of-a-kind: 250-750 coins (depending on rank)
- Full house: 90
- Flush: 70
- Straight: 50
- 3-of-a-kind: 35
- Two pairs: 25
- Pairs of Jacks or Better: 15
- Any other hand: 5
Bonus Poker Deluxe
Very similar to standard Bonus Poker, the main difference between this variant and its cousin is the extra bonuses offered for four 2s through 4s and four aces.
Once again, a max bet of five coins per hand sees payouts climb to 4000 coins for a royal flush. Nonroyal prizes include the following.
- Str eight: 250 coins
- 4-of-a-kind: 400-1000
- Full house: 120
- Flush: 100
- Straight: 75
- 3-of-a-kind: 50
- Two pairs: 35
- Pairs of Jacks or Better: 25
- Any other hand: 5
SupaJacks
Offering higher payouts across the board, SupaJacks starts seeing better returns with a paying pair of jacks. Five-coin bets on a royal flush maximize at 4000 coins with this multi-hand poker variety. The rest of the pay table shakes out as follows.
- Royals: 1000 coins
- Str eight: 400
- 4-of-a-kind: 500-1200
- Full house: 150
- Flush: 120
- Straight: 90
- 3-of-a-kind: 70
- Two pairs: 50
- Pairs of Jacks or Better: 40
- Any other hand: 10
Aces and Faces
Two-pair payouts start things off on the right foot in Aces and Faces, a multi-hand poker title that continues to rise with straight flushes at 400 coins. Maximizing a royal flush on a $5 per hand wager nets you the standard 4000 coins with this one. Elsewhere in the pay table, you'll find the following.
- Royals: 250 coins
- Str eight: 200
- 4-of-a-kind: 400-1000
- Full house: 120
- Flush: 100
- Straight: 75
- 3-of-a-kind: 50
- Two pairs: 40
- Pairs of Jacks or Better: 30
- Any other hand: 15
Wild Joker
Wildcards in the form of jokers spice things up in this entertaining multi-hand poker variant. As you might expect, five-coin bets on a maximum of five hands yield payouts topping out at 4000 coins for a royal flush. Everything else pays out according to the following chart.
- Royals: 1000 coins
- Str eight: 400
- 4-of-a-kind: 500-1200
- Full house: 150
- Flush: 120
- Wild Royal Flush: 800
- Straight: 90
- 3-of-a-kind: 70
- Two pairs: 50
- Pairs of Joks or Better: 40
- Joker and Ace – 150
- Any other hand: 10
Triple Pocket Go Wild!
Things get crazy in Triple Pocket Go Wild! as you play the role of dealer and player against two AI opponents. Straight flushes lead the way at 200 coins, and the top single-hand payout checks in at a comparatively meager 800/4000. Take a gander at the rest of the pay table below.
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Royals: 250 coins
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Str eight: 200
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4-of-a-kind: 400-1000
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Full house: 150
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Flush: 120
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Go-Go Girls wild royal flush: 800
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Straight: 90
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3-of-a-kind: 70
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Two pairs: 50
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Pairs of Jacks or Better: 40
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Any other hand: 15
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What Is the House Edge of Multi Hand Video Poker?
In general, the house edge for video poker ranges from 0.5% to 5%.5 Multi-hand poker titles fall towards the lower end of this spectrum, with most variations coming in around a 0.5% house edge when optimal strategy is employed.
On the high end among multi-hand poker video poker games, Triple Pocket Go Wild! checks in at 2.79% when played perfectly.
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How Do I Increase My Odds of Winning When Playing Multi-Hand?
The best way to increase your odds of winning when playing multi-hand poker is to learn the correct strategy for when to hold and when to fold in various situations.
You may be familiar with general video poker strategy for one hand at a time, but multi-hand poker requires slightly different logic due to the fact that you’re playing through multiple hands at once. Because you’re paying more per spin, you want to make sure you’re always making the best possible choices to maximize your expected value (EV).
A great resource for learning how to play multi-hand poker perfectly is . This free chart lays out exactly what you should do for every possible situation you might encounter while playing multi-hand poker.
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Can I Count Cards in Multi-Hand Poker?
Technically, you could try counting cards in multi-hand poker, but it wouldn’t do you much good.
Card counting is a video poker strategy that helps you keep track of the remaining cards in the deck so you know when more high cards are left to be dealt. Video poker cabins typically shuffle after every game, which makes card counting largely useless anyway, but it’s virtually impossible to count cards effectively when playing through multiple hands at once.
Moreover holding onto low cards in the hopes of getting more aces and big cash outs in the future goes out the window when you realize holding those low cards causes you to lose money in the hands you’re playing right now. So, while counting cards in multi-hand poker doesn’t hurt, it definitely doesn’t help either.
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What’s the Best Multi-Hand Video Poker Game for Beginners?
The best multi-hand poker game for beginners is Jacks or Better because it’s easy to understand and follows the same basic rules as other forms of poker.
In a game of Jacks or Better, you need to hold at least a pair of jacks to qualify for a payout. From there, the ranks of a winning hand ascend to include two pair, three of a kind, straights, flushes, full houses, four of a kind, straight flushes, and royal flushes. If you wind up with a hand that doesn’t meet the minimum qualifier of a pair of jacks, you lose your bet.
This provides instant feedback and makes it easy for beginners to get a feel for what goes into a winning hand without becoming overwhelmed with complexities.
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What’s More Profitable: Playing Multi-Hand Video Poker With a Higher Number of Hands or a Higher Wager Per Hand?
It takes progressively more risk to go from playing one hand of multi-hand poker to two, to five, to 10, to 52 hands (which would take all 52 cards in a standard deck). However, your expected return increases in lockstep with your exposure to risk. Specifically, going from one hand to two cuts your risk of losing on all five cards by half, while increasing your expected return by approximately 0.25%.
This principle holds true as you move from two hands to five and from five hands to 10 hands. At ten hands, you’re playing with the entire deck, which is known as a 100 hand game in industry parlance. Moving on to 52 hand multi-hand poker games, or “big mo” games because a successful hand guarantees 52 coins on each of your 52 hands, bumps expected return by another 0.25%.
On the face of it, moving from one hand to 52 hands appears to multiply your risk 52 times. And it does in absolute terms. But from a percentage standpoint, going from one hand to 52 hands only increases your risk of losing on all hands by a factor of 32.72%.
This is important because the laws of probability dictate that variance (your risk of loss) rises as a function of the square root of the number of hands played. Thus, the risk of losing on all 52 hands is only double the risk of losing on all one hand.
Reasons Why Playing at Online Casinos Is So Much FunTherefore, because your expected return increases linearly with the number of hands played, and your risk of loss grows at a slower rate than this linear function, your overall net return on invested capital increases by more than you increase your risk by going from one hand to two, to five, to 10 hands, and on up.
This would seem to suggest that playing more hands of multi-hand poker is always preferable to raising your wager per hand. And in a perfect world, where players make zero mistakes and maximize their payments on every hand, this would absolutely be the case.
Unfortunately, human beings aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. Occasionally, we misread our hands or forget which cards we held across multiple hands. When this happens, it becomes possible to lose less money by betting more on individual hands than to try and maximize our returns by playing more hands at lower rates.
Here’s why: When you make a mistake on one hand, that mistake impacts just one hand. But when you make that same mistake across 52 hands, it costs you 52 units instead of one. Therefore, in the real world, it makes sense to play one hand for five units than it does to play 52 hands for one unit per hand if there’s a reasonable chance you’ll make a costly mistake on 10 or more of those 52 hands.
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Can I Use the Same Strategy for Both Single-Hand and Multi-Hand Poker?
No, you cannot use the same strategy for both single-hand and multi-hand poker. That’s because multi-hand poker variants were specifically designed to encourage players to hold on to low cards that don’t help their chances of winning any one hand in order to improve their odds of hitting a big, multi-handed payday.
Because players are incentivized to make suboptimal decisions when playing multi-hand poker, the correct strategy for this variant of the game differs from that used in single-hand video poker. If you want to play multi-hand poker, you need to study a strategy chart designed for this specific variant of the game.
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How Do I Choose the Right Multi-Hand Poker Game for Me?
The best way to choose the right multi-hand poker game for you is to determine what type of paytable you’re most comfortable with and then pick a theme that appeals to you personally.
Of the seven multi-hand poker games covered in this post, Jacks or Better, SupaJacks, Aces and Faces, and Jacks or Better with a wild joker feature lower paying paytables on this game. This makes them appealing options for players who routinely exceed 100 hands per hour.
If big bonuses are important to you, you may want to seek out multi-hand poker titles like Bonus Poker, Bonus Poker Deluxe, or Wild Joker, which offer large payouts for four-of-a-kind hands ranked from four 2s through four aces.
Finally, titles like tripe pocket go wild! may appeal to players looking for a little bit more action in their video poker experience.
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Do I Have to Download Special Software to Play Online Multi-Hand Poker?
No, you don’t generally have to download special software to play online multi-hand poker.
In years past, multi-hand poker was exclusively available in a download format. But advancements in technology have closed the gap between download and , and instant play versions of multi-hand poker are now commonly found in modern-day casinos.
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What’s the Difference Between Multi-Hand Poker and Pai Gow Poker?
Multi-hand poker and Pai Gow Poker are both popular games offered in many reputable casinos, but they differ significantly in their rules of play.
Multi-hand poker puts your against your own hands multiple times at once. You attempt to get four of your five hands to pay off three bets. Because you’re playing against yourself, multi-hand poker is a game of chance with no skill element whatsoever after the initial cards are dealt.
In Pai Gow Poker, you play against the dealer. The house deals you seven cards, which you use to create a five-card hand and a two-card hand. The five-card hand must be stronger than the two-card hand to win. Tie hands result in a push.
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