At one time, video poker was a pretty popular game that made players ponder the following question: slots or video poker?
The answer these days is almost always the former since video poker doesn’t have quite the same crowd that it once did. Now, this isn’t to say video poker is a bad game, because it’s actually pretty fun. And skilled players can work the commonly found Jacks or Better game down to a 0.46% house edge. But the reality is that many people would rather play slots nowadays than grind out near-video-poker profits. And if you’re wondering why, we’ll discuss three key reasons below.
1. Most Slots Players just want to be entertained
Many people who don’t play slots think that the big reason why others do is to hit a huge jackpot. However, research shows that entertainment is perhaps the biggest reason for playing slots. Given that modern slots have so many great aspects, including stunning graphics, bonus rounds, storylines and animations, they do a very good job at entertaining players. Contrast this to video poker, which, while fun for competitive people, just doesn’t offer enough all-around fun for many casino goers.
2. Slots have more Room for Innovation
20 years ago, the slots world was a very different place where you found more classic 3-reelers than the common 5-reel video slots of today. Casinos/game manufacturers have done a good job at changing with the times to keep players’ interest. And the latest innovation involves adding skill-based bonus rounds to games. Video poker, on the other hand, hasn’t really changed much, aside from the different variations.
3. Video Poker is work
Want to trim the house edge below 1% in video poker? Then you need to learn basic strategy, practice and think about every hand you play. And the worst part is that positive-expectation video poker games are very rare these days. In fact, the lack of video poker games that pay over 100% payback (w/ perfect strategy) is why fewer and fewer are playing these days. So rather than work hard to achieve 99.54% payback, many would rather just play slots.