Five-card draw, Jacks or Better paytable. Played optimally (perfect hold/discard decisions) the house edge falls to 0.46%, the lowest non-zero edge of any Duel original. The decisions matter; play them right and the math is on your side.
Place a bet. Get dealt 5 cards. Choose which to hold (0–5). Discarded cards are replaced by fresh draws. Final hand is paid against a published table: Pair of Jacks or higher (1×), Two Pair (2×), Three of a Kind (3×), Straight (4×), Flush (6×), Full House (9×), Four of a Kind (25×), Straight Flush (50×), Royal Flush (800× on max bet).
There is exactly one mathematically correct hold for every 5-card hand. Memorising a basic-strategy table for Jacks or Better drops the edge from ~5% to 0.46%. The Royal Flush bonus on max-bet (800× vs 250× per coin) means always playing max-bet is part of optimal strategy. Hand ranking heuristics: hold pairs over kickers, hold 4-to-flush over 3-to-straight, never break a made flush for a Royal draw.
Both the initial 5-card deal and the replacement cards are drawn from a deterministic Fisher-Yates shuffle of the 52-card deck, derived from the seed pair + nonce. Recompute the shuffle locally and confirm the dealt order matches the casino's published log.
Read the full fairness guideNo. A slot's EV is fixed at the published RTP. Video Poker EV depends on hold decisions, perfect play returns 99.54%, random play returns ~95%. The skill component is real and worth ~4.5%.
Max bet (5 coins) pays 800× on Royal Flush; 1-coin pays 250×. Always playing max bet is part of optimal strategy, it raises long-run RTP by ~2%.
Yes. The casino does not police external strategy aids, if you want to follow a printed Jacks or Better optimal-play table, that is exactly the math the casino expects players to use.
Lower than Mines or Crash, higher than Castle Roulette or Blackjack. The Royal Flush is a once-per-40,000-hand event; without it the game runs as a steady high-frequency, low-volatility grind.