GUIDE · TRIP PREP

Practice video poker before Vegas: the 7-day plan

You don't need to memorize a 40-line pro chart to stop donating money. One week of focused practice — about 20 minutes a day — fixes the mistakes that actually cost you.

First, know what a mistake costs

The average self-taught player leaks roughly 2–4% of every bet to wrong holds — on $1,000 of play, that’s $20–40 handed back for nothing, on top of the house edge. The three most expensive habits are all fixable in a week: keeping a kicker with a pair (exactly −0.148 per bet, here’s the math), breaking a low pair for an open straight draw (−0.143, the classic reversal), and sitting down at an 8/5 machine when a 9/6 was across the aisle (−2.24% on every single hand, the paytable guide).

The plan

Day	20-minute session	Goal
1	Read the Learn page; play 25 relaxed hands with hints on	understand hold/draw and EV feedback
2	Study chart lines 1–9 (the made hands and big draws); 50 hands	top half of the chart automatic
3	Study lines 10–18; 50 hands, hints off	full chart seen once; expect mistakes
4	50 hands; open your Mistakes page; read each EV loss	know YOUR three weak spots
5	Drill your weak spots (the trainer queues them); 50 hands	worst habit under control
6	75 hands at speed; re-drill anything above 0.05 EV loss	90%+ correct-rate day
7	Paytable day: 5-second 9/6 check + 50 clean hands	ready — and pickier about machines

The trainer grades every hold against the exact best play and tells you which chart line you missed, so day 4’s “know your weak spots” is automatic — it literally lists them, sorted by what they cost you.

Video poker trainer feedback showing an incorrect hold: your EV 0.364 vs best EV 0.824, the chart rule played vs the right one, and the dollar cost of the misplay — What every graded hand looks like: the exact EV loss, the chart line you played, the one you should have — and what the habit costs in dollars.

Start Day 1 now — free, no signup →

Three Vegas-day rules that outrank any chart

Always five coins. The royal pays 800-per-coin only at max bet; short-coin play adds ~1.5% to the house edge by itself. Pick a denomination where 5 coins fits your bankroll rather than betting fewer coins at a higher denom. Read the glass first. Full house 9, flush 6 — or keep walking; two identical machines can differ by 2%. Expect variance. Even perfect play on the best paytable loses most sessions; the practice is about not adding your own leak on top. This is training software, not a system — video poker remains negative-EV on nearly all machines.

After the trip

Bring your questions home: any hand you second-guessed at the casino, type it into the analyzer and get the exact ranking of all 32 holds. That habit — check the real number instead of asking the guy next to you — is the whole method here: how the numbers are computed.