The Difference Between Online Texas Hold'em Poker and Video Poker
Know your way around internet poker, plus Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi's latest big win...
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE For those of you considering learning poker and going online for the first time it’s important to define the difference between regular online Texas Hold’em and video poker. Video poker is played against a machine with a fifty three card pack (including the joker). The house is banking the game but the machine is not trying to beat you. It just delivers the cards. There’s no-one to bluff. It’s more like solitaire. Hand rankings are more or less the same for regular online poker as they are for video poker. With video poker your “straight” is always going to win you something. There are no other players so you can’t be trumped by a Royal Flush at the last minute. Some interesting differences do occur. For example, in Texas Hold’em, a Straight Flush is pretty much as likely to win a pot as a Royal Flush, except on those one in a million occasions when both hands arrive in the same game. In video poker however, a Royal Flush pays out sixteen times more than a Straight Flush!
VIDEO VALUES If you land a pair of Aces and a pair of Queens in Hold’em it will crush an opponent who has a pair of eights and a pair of sixes. Strangely, in video poker both these hands would pay out the same winnings. In other words, “two pair hands” are all rewarded the same payout in video poker.
SIMPLE STRATEGIES VERSUS SKILLS All video machines are random. Players who think they see patterns are deluded. Whilst there are some excellent strategies for playing “Deuces Wild” on video poker machines, the fact remains that your chances of winning at Texas Hold’em are enhanced by certain skill-sets which can be developed and that really isn’t the case in any meaningful sense against a random generator. This is what separates poker in all its online forms from ordinary gaming.
THE CADILLAC OF POKER Poker’s elite are beginning to look more and more like top golf stars. Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, not content with winning the World Poker Open final table as previously reported, stormed straight into the Borgata Poker Open and nailed himself $1,173,000 plus a free entry into the WPT Championship worth a further $25,000 on top. Think that’s enough? Not these days it isn’t! The nice folk who own the Gold Strike casino, which incidentally overlooks the Mississippi river where modern poker first took hold in America, decided they’d throw in a fully loaded Cadillac Escalade just to add a little cream to the Borgata cake. “The Grinder” duly drove off into the Deep South sunset in a four wheeler large enough to carry his winnings.
