Deuces Wild Video Poker: Rules, Pay Tables and Strategy

Deuces Wild is video poker in which all four 2s are wild: a deuce can stand in for any card to make the best possible hand. That changes everything about the game compared with Jacks or Better. A pair no longer pays, the lowest paying hand is three of a kind, and the pay table adds hands that are impossible without wild cards, such as five of a kind and a wild royal flush. This guide covers the rules, the hand ranking, the full-pay pay table and how to recognise it, the odds of every hand, and the strategy for which cards to hold.

How to play Deuces Wild

1. Choose your stake. Most games take 1 to 5 coins per hand. Look at the natural royal flush line of the pay table: it usually pays 800 per coin only at the maximum bet.
2. Deal. You get five cards from a standard 52-card deck, shuffled for every hand.
3. Hold. Tap the cards you want to keep. The game treats every 2 as wild automatically.
4. Draw. The cards you did not hold are replaced from the same deck. There is only one draw.
5. Get paid. Your final hand is paid from the pay table. Three of a kind or better pays; anything less loses the bet.

The deuces always take the value that gives you the highest paying hand. With 7♥ 7♣ 2♠ 9♦ K♥, for example, the deuce becomes a third seven and you hold three of a kind.

Deuces Wild hand ranking and pay table

The table below is the “full pay” version, the best-known Deuces Wild pay table. Payouts are per coin. The chance of each final hand assumes you hold the best cards every time.

Overall, about 45% of hands end with a paying hand and 54.7% with nothing. Four of a kind is the hand that matters most: it lands about once every 15 hands and supplies about a third of the game’s total return (32.5 of the 100.76 points), more than any other line. Three of a kind is the next biggest, at 28.5 points. The rare top hands (natural royal, four deuces, wild royal, five of a kind) supply about 15 points between them.

Full pay and short pay: how to read a Deuces Wild pay table

Deuces Wild machines and games look the same but pay differently, and the return with perfect play is set entirely by the pay table. Players name a table by its middle lines, read from the wild royal down: 25/15/9/5/3/2 means the wild royal pays 25, five of a kind 15, a straight flush 9, four of a kind 5, a full house 3 and a flush 2. The returns below assume perfect play and the 800 royal; all of them pay 200 for four deuces, 2 for a straight and 1 for three of a kind.

Three quick checks tell you most of what you need:

• Four of a kind: 5 or 4? Four of a kind is the most common big hand, so one unit here is worth about 6.5 percentage points of return. Tables that pay 4 make up for it on the full house and flush, but only partly.
• Full house and flush: 3/2 on a table with a 5 for four of a kind; 4/3 on a 4 table. A 4 for four of a kind with a 3/2 full house and flush (the 94.82% and 91.42% rows) is the weakest combination.
• Wild royal and five of a kind: 25 and 15 or 16 are standard; 20 and 12 or 10 cost one to two points.

The 100.76% figure for full pay is a long-run average over millions of hands, and it assumes every hand is played perfectly; it says nothing about the result of any one session. Online Deuces Wild games set their own pay tables, so open the pay table on the screen and compare it with this list before you play.

Why max coins matter

On most machines the natural royal flush pays 800 per coin only at the maximum bet (usually 5 coins) and 250 per coin below it. On a full-pay table, that alone lowers the return from 100.76% to 99.57%, a cost of about 1.2 percentage points, even after the strategy is adjusted. If the royal pays the same at every bet size, the number of coins does not change the return.

Deuces Wild strategy

The strategy below is the simple strategy published by the Wizard of Odds (Michael Shackleford) for the full-pay table. It returns 100.71%, against 100.76% for perfect play. Start by counting your deuces, then look at every way you could play the hand and choose the one that is highest in that list. Never discard a deuce.

Four deuces

• Hold the four deuces (the fifth card does not matter: four deuces already pays 200).

Three deuces

1. A wild royal flush (pat, all five cards)
2. Otherwise hold the three deuces only and draw two

That includes three deuces with a pair, which is already five of a kind. The pat hand pays 15; the three deuces alone return 15.06 per coin on average, because a fourth deuce (200) or a wild royal (25) is still possible.

Two deuces

1. Any pat four of a kind or higher
2. 4 to a royal flush (two deuces plus two suited cards from 10 to ace)
3. 4 to a straight flush with two suited cards in a row from 6-7 up (6-7, 7-8, 8-9 or 9-10)
4. Otherwise hold the two deuces only

One deuce

1. Any pat four of a kind or higher
2. 4 to a royal flush
3. A full house
4. 4 to a straight flush with three suited cards in a row from 5-6-7 up
5. Three of a kind, a straight or a flush
6. Any other 4 to a straight flush
7. 3 to a royal flush
8. 3 to a straight flush with two suited cards in a row from 6-7 up
9. Otherwise hold the deuce only

No deuces

1. 4 or 5 cards to a natural royal flush
2. Any pat three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind or straight flush
3. 4 to a straight flush
4. 3 to a royal flush
5. A pair
6. 4 to a flush
7. 4 to an outside straight (open at both ends, such as 7-8-9-10)
8. 3 to a straight flush
9. 4 to an inside straight, unless the missing card is a 2
10. Jack and queen of the same suit
11. Otherwise discard all five

The rule that surprises most players: with two pair and no deuces, keep only one pair. Two pair pays nothing in Deuces Wild, and drawing three cards to one pair gives more chances at three or four of a kind than drawing one card to two pairs.

Examples

The figures are the average return per coin of each play on the full-pay table, worked out over every possible draw.

The ace-king hand is the clearest difference from Jacks or Better: high cards are worth nothing on their own here, so an ace and king of the same suit are worth less than five new cards. The simple strategy keeps only a suited jack and queen from the two-card royal draws; perfect play also keeps a few others, such as a suited 10 and jack, and that is part of the 0.05-point gap between the two.

How often you are dealt deuces

Two hands in three start with no deuce, so the no-deuce part of the strategy is the one you use most.

Deuces wild in home poker

Outside video poker, “deuces wild” is also a house rule for ordinary poker games such as five-card draw or stud: the four 2s are wild, and everything else follows the normal rules of the game. Five of a kind becomes possible, and most house rules rank it as the highest hand, above a royal flush. Agree on that ranking before the first deal, because it is not fixed by any official rulebook.

Deuces Wild online

Online Deuces Wild is random-number-generator software, dealt from a freshly shuffled deck every hand. 22bet lists Deuces Wild from Habanero, Betsoft, Play’n GO and Red Rake, alongside Jacks or Better, Joker Poker and the Bonus Poker family. Each studio sets its own pay table, so compare the four of a kind, full house and flush lines with the table above before you play. For the standard version of the game, see our guide to video poker and Jacks or Better; for how a return percentage plays out over a session, see our guide to RTP.

Play responsibly

Deuces Wild is for players aged 18 and over. A return is an average over a very long run of hands: individual sessions swing well above and below it, and a game deals several hands a minute. Set a budget before you play and stop when it is spent.