The game of video poker is a fairly recent phenomenon, dating back to only the mid-'70s. Although early slot machines used cards and poker hands as payoff symbols, players had no choices to make; the reels stopped wherever the machine determined they would.

The increasing popularity of video poker can be traced to several factors and characteristics it has in common with many of the more popular casino games. For instance:

• video poker is fast (like craps).
• video poker gives players the opportunity to make decisions and a reasonable control over the results (like blackjack).
• video poker is similar to poker (like many of the newest casino games).
• video poker gives the possibility of a large payoff and is not intimidating (like slot machines).