The idea of a kicker in poker comes from games like Texas hold ‘em and shouldn’t be relied on when playing video poker. What to learn more? Okay, I’ll explain.
Now in when you play poker at a table (or virtual online table) the idea is to beat the other guys’ hands. Now sometimes you have a two players with basically the same hand. Let’s say both have a pair of eights. Then the highest remaining unpaired card is the “kicker” and decided who wins. So if one player has a pair of eights and a jack, he has a jack kicker. But if the other has an ace, then he has an ace kicker. Which is why in poker holding a high card in a hand can be a strategic move.
So, how does this apply to video poker? It doesn’t. Not at all. Which is sometimes a hard habit to break if you’ve played table poker or even if you’ve read lots of table poker strategy. So, let’s look at pairs in video poker. You have a pair of eights. And an Ace. We’ll say we’re playing Jacks or Better because that provides a clean strategy to work against. (Acey Deucy would have a different strategy when it comes to aces.) But back to Jacks or Better. You want to hold the pair of eights and hope you draw another eight. Or even both eights for four of a kind. (I’ll talk about that a bit in the next post.) But the instinct sometimes is to hold onto that Ace just in case you need that high card. Don’t. Let it go. You don’t need it. A pair of eights and a ace is a losing hand so holding the ace doesn’t help. And holding it gives you one less card that could be that third or fourth eight. There is no opponent to beat with a high card kicker. There is just the machine. Let the kicker go. Come on, you can do it.
