A fair reading of "How do slots make money?" comes from the pay table. Video poker sits between slots and table poker. A machine deals five cards, the player chooses which to hold, and a pay table fixed on the screen says what every final hand is worth. Because the player makes real decisions and the pay table is public, video poker is one of the few casino games where the odds can be read before any money goes in.
Video poker odds are good, and better than slots on most machines because the return is printed rather than hidden. A full pay machine of the classic kind returns more than ninety nine percent with correct play, while a typical slot returns noticeably less and never says exactly how much. The best hands pay most: a royal flush, straight flush and four of a kind carry the top of the table, and small changes to what a full house or flush pays move the entire return.
Players who study the game lean on tools. A strategy analyzer shows the best hold for any deal, books and printed strategy cards cover each variant, and a bankroll calculator estimates how much money a session needs to ride out the swings. Practice at home on free versions is how most players learn the holds before staking anything. The autoplay mode some machines offer holds cards automatically, which is convenient but hides the decisions that make the game worth learning.
Strategy charts, analyzers and calculators show the best hold for every hand of a given pay table. They cut mistakes; they cannot change the pay table.
Each hand is a separate stake, so ten hands cost ten times one. The swings grow with the number of hands, not the return.
Wild cards change which hands are possible and so the whole pay table. Deuces wild makes four of a kind common, and bonus variants pay extra on certain quads.
A regulated machine shuffles a virtual deck at random for each deal, and its cards cannot know what the player holds. The pay table sets the return.
Set a budget and a time before starting and stop at either. The speed of video poker makes limits more useful, not less.