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Two Ways Royal Online Video Poker

 

Hi Lo poker cash games are extremely popular because the pot is split between the players with the highest and the lowest ranked hands. This duality adds to the challenge. Generally, online video poker games award larger payouts for higher ranked hands. But there is a variant titled Two Ways Royal that exhibits a whiff of Hi Lo poker.

Two Ways Royals online video poker is based on the common Jacks or Better variant, with some tweaks to the paylines and payouts. The lowest ranked payline that offers a payout is a pair of jacks or higher, which is known as Jacks or Better. The other paylines remain the same, except for royal flush. There are two types of royal flush hands. The Hi Royal Flush is the normal royal flush hand with 10, J, Q, K and A of the same suit. The Lo Royal Flush is a hand with 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the same suit. It is because of this that the online video poker variant is called Two Ways Royal.

The following payouts differ from Jacks or Better. In the normal Jacks or Better video poker variant, a suited 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 pays out as a straight flush, which is 50 to 1. But in Two Ways Royal this hand pays at 800 to 1 (for five coins wagered). In order to compensate for this some of the other payouts are reduced. If this was not done, then average return to the player would exceed 100% and the online casino would go bankrupt. Therefore the payout for the Full House is reduced from 9 to 1 to 6 to 1 and the payout for the Flush is reduced from 6 to 1 to 5 to 1. This results in overcompensation, so the payout for the Four of a Kind is increased from 25 to 1 to 40 to 1. The end result is that the average return to the player is 99.8%. This is marginally greater than the 99.5% average return for Jacks or Better. This may not seem attractive to the novice online video poker player, but the experts know that this increase will make an appreciable difference in the long run.

The game play is the same as the other online video poker variants. Two Ways Royal is offered at all Playtech online casinos. So the next time you log on to one, play Two Ways Royal instead of Jacks or Better.

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