Video Poker History
Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker. The aim of the game is to make the best five-card poker hand; the better hand you make, the more the machine pays out.
Video poker is a very popular game due to its simplicity, high RTP rate, and the player's agency over their outcome. But where did it all begin? Here we will take a closer look at the evolution of video poker, from the first machines to how we know it today.
Mechanical Beginnings – The First Poker Gambling Machines
The very first poker machine was created by the Sittman and Pitt Company in 1891. Their game had five mechanical reels, each containing images of 10 playing cards. This, of course, meant that only 50 cards were used in these games. The ten of spades and jack of hearts were usually the two missing cards, making it even harder to make a royal flush.
When a player inserted a nickel, they could pull the handle, and each drum would spin and eventually stop, creating a five-card poker hand. The game was more akin to slot machines than video poker, and is often referred to as the precursor to the modern slot machine. But it is also the first recorded game to feature poker hands to determine wins.
The father of the slot machine, Charles Fey, saw this idea and created a machine of his own in 1898. In 1901, he expanded on the concept and created his Skill Draw machine, which is the first iteration of what we would today consider to be a video poker game. That's because Skill Draw had a "hold" function which allowed players to hold one or more of their cards and respin the other drums in an attempt to improve their hand.
Over the years, the Sittman and Pitt Company would create their own poker draw machines to rival those of Fey's. In the early 1900s, poker was one of the most popular card games around. The newly introduced draw feature gave players a sense of agency in the outcome of their game, which made draw poker machines incredibly popular, with such a high demand that supply could barely keep up!
Video Star – The Introduction of Video Poker
It wasn't until 1970 that the first digitized version of these machines came to be. The very first video poker machine was called "Poker-Matic", created by Dale Electronics. This machine was installed in almost every casino in Las Vegas when it was invented. While this first version of the game didn't turn out as big of a hit as many expected, it laid the foundations for future video poker games.
In the mid-1970s, a man named Si Redd - a distributor for Bally's Gaming - pitched the idea of "Video Poker" to his executives. They roundly rejected the idea, deciding to stick with the highly profitable slot machines, which made up their core business at the time. They decided to let Redd keep the patent, and within months, he brokered a deal with Fortune Coin Company to create and mass produce his video poker machine under the name SIRCOMA (Si Redd's Coin Machines).
The machines made by Si Redd and SIRCOMA are much closer to the video poker games we know today, as they used a digital screen, and all 52 cards could be drawn at any time. SIRCOMA's Draw Poker was introduced in 1979 and while it took a couple of years to gain interest, it was considered one of the most popular games in casinos by 1981. That same year SIRCOMA also changed its name to International Game Technology and the company went public.
Jacks or Better – The Golden Age of Video Poker
The first video poker machines didn't garner much attention from players. The original machines had a minimum hand requirement of "two pair" to win a prize, and many people thought that was too hard to achieve on a regular basis. As such, not many people played the first iteration of video poker machines. They were initially wary of these new machines, and the "two pair" minimum to win a prize was too high of a bar for most people to want to play. However, when SIRCOMA lowered the minimum hand requirement to "a pair of jacks" or better, suddenly, video poker exploded in popularity as people realized that these games had extremely high payout rates.
Note: One of the great things about video poker machines is that because the game is based on poker, the math is much easier to figure out. If you're playing on a slot machine, you have no idea how often a cherry is programmed to appear, so you can't tell if the payout you're getting is worth it or not. However, with a deck of cards, you know the odds of each individual card appearing is 1/52, the odds of a particular rank are 1/13, and the odds of a specific suit are 1/4.
Now people not only had the agency of being able to make decisions of their hands, but they could also work out the math behind the game to see if it was beatable. This led to the golden age of video poker.
The game's popularity had grown so much that casinos started to introduce games where a positive win rate was attainable. Games like the Full Pay version of Deuces Wild had a maximum RTP rate of 100.76%. This game has slightly different rules to the standard Jacks or Better machines, as all twos are wild (meaning they can substitute for any card to make the strongest hand possible). Some of these machines still exist in Las Vegas today. Here's a payout table showing the potential payouts.
| Hand | 1 credit | 2 credits | 3 credits | 4 credits | 5 credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural Royal Flush | 300 | 600 | 900 | 1200 | 4000 |
| Four Deuces | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 1000 |
| Wild Royal Flush | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Five of a Kind | 15 | 30 | 45 | 60 | 75 |
| Straight Flush | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Four of a Kind | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Full House | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Flush | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Straight | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Three of a Kind | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Theoretical Return | 99.70% | 99.70% | 99.70% | 99.70% | 100.80% |
Back then, there even existed a quarter game that offered up to a 103.2% RTP rate to its players. Casinos thought that since it was just for quarters, people wouldn't be able to make much money from it, but playing the max bet of $1.25 at 800 hands per hour, could potentially give $32 an hour in playing profits.
The reason they were able to offer games with positive RTP rates was that players had to play close to perfect in order to attain it. Google or helpful sites like casino.guru didn't exist to help explain the strategy back then. This meant that casinos were able to advertise these games that were potentially profitable for the players while still making money.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the golden age of video poker came to an end sometime around the mid-2000s. Casinos were then starting to see fewer profits, which meant that they lowered the comps people would get. This, plus the prevalence of video poker strategy, led to casinos pulling their profitable machines.
Internet Poker – The First Online Video Poker Game
While video poker was still riding high at land-based casinos in the mid-90s, online casinos started popping up, offering players a chance to play their favorite games from home. Naturally, video poker was one of those games. In fact, the first online video poker games were made by Microgaming in 1994 – making it one of the first games available to play online.
Video poker became a staple at online casinos across the internet, as it was at the height of its powers at the time. As online casinos weren't restricted by things like physical space, they could host as many video poker games as they liked, which led to them becoming even more popular.
What Does Video Poker Look Like Today?
There's no doubt that the golden age of video poker is certainly over. There's not a lot of hope for anyone who's looking to become a professional video poker player, as almost all of the positive RTP machines are in Nevada and are now limited in the amount you can bet on them. The old Full Pay Deuces Wild game is now a quarter game rather than a dollar game, limiting the hourly payout at a maximum of $8.
While the dream of becoming a professional video poker player is all but dead, it doesn't mean you have to stop playing video poker altogether. The game is still as fun now as it was back then, with lots of modern versions available online, many of which can be tried out for free on our free video poker games page. If you enjoy the game, we encourage you to keep playing – just remember to do so responsibly.
Note: If the talk of video poker strategy and positive RTP rates has piqued your interest, you should check out our video poker strategy page for more information on how to play video poker.
