The history of the game starts when the first video poker machines appeared together with the first personal computers in the 1970s and were quite primitive compared to the machines that are used to nowadays – they were big, their screens were black and white. A black and white video poker machine was developed by Bally and just eight months later a rival company of theirs countered the Bally machine and created a color version of the game.
The game started becoming popular in the Las Vegas casinos in 1979 when SIRCOMA (Si Redds Coin Machines) launched a variant of the video poker, called Draw Poker. It featured the lowest possible pairs and, therefore, there were more winning hands which was good news for the gamblers. The game became widely popular in all casinos since people considered the machines as safer to play, compared to the table games.
Nowadays, there are hundreds of different video poker modifications and variations. The payout schedules also vary and, generally, the players have a very wide choice of games, rules, payouts, designs and etc. An interesting fact is that an early variation of video poker, called Jacks or Better, is one of the most popular game variations in the casinos nowadays.
The game has always been a favorite one in almost every casino in the world. Many people like playing video poker because of the ease of use of the slot machines and because it is less complicated than the regular poker games but it still requires decision-making skills.
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