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The precursor to video poker started out in the bars of San Francisco in the last decade of the 19th century when a German mechanic by the name of Charles August Fey released the world’s first ever slot machine.Back then there were no luck of the Irish themes or games based on Ancient Egypt. Instead, those early games focused on something that most people in bars had a working knowledge of anyway – poker.
To win a series of prizes from behind the bar, patrons had to pull winning hands from the reels. In the 125+ years that have followed, not much has changed other than how people play video poker and the prizes that they can get their hands on.
How different is video poker from real poker though? Read on to find out as we take a closer look at the two.
Real Poker: Strategy, Statistics and Bravado
If you want to be the best poker player in the world, you can train and learn and get yourself to within at least a couple of hundred of the World Number One, depending on your natural talent for picking up maths and probability.
That’s because whilst there’s an element of luck to the game, most of it can be learned and studied. Hands are, in essence, the product of mathematics and probabilities and whilst you can’t predict them with 100% accuracy, you can get a pretty good grasp of them if you understand the maths.
Likewise, the strategies for what to do in every in-game scenario can be learned over time and optimised through practice and repetition. The hardest part for many to master though is the psychological element of the game, the bluffing and bravado.
Even that though can be improved. Or at the very least, you can reduce how much you give away from your facial expressions.
In these ways, poker is much like a sport in that those who have a natural talent for the fundamentals are at an advantage. But it’s training and practice that really makes a player and takes them to that elite level.
Video Poker: Strategic-ish, Statistic-ish and Bravado-less
The video alternative of the game is almost none of the thing discussed above. In terms of strategy, video poker is as simple as knowing when to press a button to carry on and when to take the money. Statistics wise, it’s a hell of a lot harder to predict than the real game as there are way more cards and a lot more variables.
Then there’s the bravado element. There’s none of that, you can’t bluff a computer-generated algorithm. The only person you can bluff is yourself, bluffing that nagging voice in the back of your head that it’s a good idea to carry on and keep losing money!
Why do People Play Video Poker?
If it’s as basic as we have described it above, why does anyone bother to play it? Well, people play it because it is basic. Day in day out we are surrounded by emails, work calls, Facebook notifications, Instagram, X, TikTok and this and that and blah, blah, blah. The noise is endless and it keeps us on edge.
So, to escape it all, some people like to completely shut off their brains to the outside world and indulge in a couple of hours of escapism. As a result, video poker online casinos in Canada are proving to be hugely popular. It’s the same reason that people spend 90 minutes zoning out on the football and others spend all evening reading books about fantasy worlds.
Video poker is escapism and it is fun escapism. Whereas poker is hard and it requires almost all of your brain. So, for the weary and brow beaten – of which there are many of us – video poker is the ideal leisure activity to shut out the noise and recharge the batteries.
Can you get better at Video Poker?
No, not really. Of course, you can cut out stupid mistakes that cost you money, but you can’t improve at it in the same way as the real life alternative and that’s pretty much the point. There’s nothing to be achieved other than escapism and the outside chance of a big win.
The best way to play it, in our opinion, is to do your research and play for the lowest stake possible and just completely zone out for half an hour or so. If you win you win, if you lose, it’s only a small amount and the real take home is the peace of mind you take away from it after.
