Jacks or Better Power Poker

These days you can find VIdeo Poker at almost any online casino, so can there truly be any justification to choose one casino or another, if you are strictly just a Video Poker player?

As with most things in life, it's not as straightforward a question as it first sounds - for a start there are many different variations of Video Poker. Right now we are looking at the Jacks or Better game. This is possibly the most common (and basic) variant of VP - whilst many regard it as being rather dull, it remains the most popular version overall to the best of my knowledge.

Discussing Jacks or Better (JoB) specifically, this is one particular version that most certainly is offered everywhere - but this version from Microgaming has several subtle differences which make it, in my opinion, the best version around.

First of all, the paytable - in land casinos it is common to find a variety of different JoB machines with varying payouts for a flush and full house - these should be 6 and 9 respectively for a "full pay" version of the game. This is the only type you should really consider playing, as anything else is just giving you much less back for your money. All of Microgaming's Video Poker games use the most generous paytables common to land casinos, and are only beaten by exclusive or specialist paytables some casinos choose to offer online.

Next, the game offers a number of speed settings, and I like to play it on maximum - in this mode, the animation is removed and the cards are simply placed on the screen right over the top of the old ones. This makes for a very quick game, which suits my style of play very well.

The cards are well drawn and it is very easy to read your hand quickly, another important factor for me in a good quality VP game. Microgaming also offer an "Auto Hold" feature, to save you making obvious hold requests yourself - bear in mind though that on occasion this feature will not hold the very best cards possible - only a true Video Poker professional will likely to spot the mistakes the game makes, and I am confident that MicroGaming's algorithm is superior to any other developer offering VP online, but nevertheless, I still consider it worth mentioning.

A couple of downsides - first of all, Microgaming used to offer an autoplay function for their VP games, but it was removed as some players were using it in order to plough through wagering requirements on a super low variance game.This is somewhat understandable, and I must say I question the point of playing VP on autoplay - it essentially turns it into nothing more than a slot machine, albeit one with an extremely high RTP percentage, which is the reason it was discontinued I suspect, but at the end of the day, I feel it was disadvantageous to players that this function was removed.

One more - some casinos now offer the full payout even if you choose to play less than five coins - I think this is sensible and in line with what players have come to expect from online casinos. Nevertheless, Microgaming continue to offer a jackpot of 4000 coins when playing five coins, but only 250 per coin otherwise, as opposed to the "fair" prize of 800 per coin - come on Microgaming, don't rip off your players just because they are low rolling!