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Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker creates a fascinating combination of two of the most interesting twists in video poker. The Spin Poker element is ideal for those who like a little bit of slot machine elements with their video poker. And the Dream Card twist gives them a chance to form hands when they get a special card that can be turned into any other in the deck.
Spin Poker Deluxe, which expands the game from nine to 20 lines; Super Times Pay Spin Poker, which adds a mystery “multiplier” to the payoffs; Triple Spin Poker, which features three games on the same screen with 27 pay lines; and Dream Card Spin Poker, which includes a “Dream Card.
Video poker has become so popular in part because the game can be played in so many different formats. Some people are happy enough to stick with the most basic format known as Jacks or Better, with both gameplay and the way that the hands are ranked mirroring Five-Card Draw.
Yet that basic Jacks or Better format for video poker can be used as the foundation for many different versions. Many of these versions use different pay tables to spice up the action. With these pay tables, you can win a lot more in a single hand than you might win playing Jacks or Better.
Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker gives you access to many of these unique pay tables. But it also adds a pair of special features that twist around game play somewhat. These special features don’t come cheap, as they each require a bigger wager for each round that you play.
First of all, there is the Spin Poker part of the equation. With Spin Poker, you build three lines of poker from a single deal. These lines can then be combined into many different five-card patterns, each of which can earn you winnings if you’ve formed a good hand.
On top of that, Dream Card gameplay can take the action to another level. By doubling your bet per hand, you have about a 50% chance of receiving a so-called “Dream Card” on any given deal. You can then change this card into whatever card in the deck improves your hand the most.
Adding these twists to the action makes for a serious expense. When you play Jacks or Better, your maximum wager is five coins per hand. But with Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, your max bet of 10 coins (to access the Dream Card) can be parlayed over nine different lines for a max of 90 coins.
But you have to look at the bright side as well. The presence of the Dream Card will improve the likelihood of you forming winning combinations to offset those bets. And getting to use that card in up to nine lines of poker really revs up the potential of a quick, significant payback while you’re playing Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker.
In the following article, we’ll tell you all you need to know about the game known as Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker. We’ll tell you how to play a basic hand of video poker,then we’ll delve into the two different special features. Finally, we’ll look at how you can play with expert strategy while also taking a look at the advantages and disadvantages involved in this unique video poker game.
If you’re brand new to video poker, Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker might seem a bit complicated at first. After all, you’ll see cards all over the screen and lines zig-zagging across the screen. You might not know if you’re coming or going when all this is going on at once.
But in truth, Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker is based on the simplest format of video poker, which is a play on Five-Card Draw. When you have the basics down, you’ll be able to venture out to play Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker and other variations with no problem.
If you’re new to video poker, you’re truly in for a treat. It’s a game which combines the self-contained play of slot machines with the strategic aspect of table games. You know what you’re going to get going into each game, thanks to the pay tables and the probabilities of making winning hands from a 52-card deck.
In addition, you can expect good payback from video poker machines, especially compared to other casino games. You can even play the game online at top gambling sites without losing anything in the translation from the casino. For all those reasons and more, video poker is one of the most gambler-friendly of all casino games.
If you already know the basics, you can skip ahead to learn about the intricacies of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker. But if you are a new video poker player just starting out, take a look at a this brief how-to first.
Your bankroll will come from the money that you put it into the machine. Or if you’re playing online, it will come from a gambling account that you create at the website of your choice. The bankroll will be used to make bets and as a place to collect your winnings.
The money that you put in will be changed into units known as credits or coins. Each of these units will be equal to whatever denomination you happen to be playing. For example, if you put $10 into a quarter machine, you’ll have 40 credits in your bankroll (10 times .25).
In basic video poker, you’ll choose between and one and five credits per hand. But Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker is drastically different in this respect. You have your choice of how much you want to bet each round, but the bottom line is that you have to be prepared to bet more.
First of all, you’ll have the choice to play three, five, or nine lines of video poker at once. You have to bet on each line if you want to win based on the cards in them. As a result, your betting burden is automatically raised.
If you choose, you can bet one through five coins for each of these lines of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker. But a 10-coin bet on each line will give you access to the Dream Cards that raise your chance of winning.
When you do the math, you can see that a Max Bet of 10 coins per the maximum amount of nine lines of video poker comes to 90 coins per round. Even at a small denomination, that is a pretty hefty amount. But you also open yourself to the highest possible payback percentage when you play Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker in this manner, so you really should consider it.
When playing a single hand of video poker, you’ll see five cards appear on your screen after you make your bet and activate the deal. These five cards will come from a simulated deck of 52, which includes the same cards as a standard deck. You have a 1 in 52 chance of ending up with a specific card in any position on the deal, and those odds never change no matter how many hands you play.
The reason for that is that random number generator software within the game will keep every deal and draw random. As a result, you shouldn’t go looking for any patterns or trends within the cards that you receive. If you do, you could end up making poor decisions about your hand.
You can hold or discard any one of the five cards in your deal. If you hold a card, it will be part of the final hand. And if you discard it, it will be replaced by another from the deck of 47 cards left after the deal.
How do you make this decision? You have to figure out which of the winning hands on the pay table you might be able to achieve based on what you have and what is left in the deck. Although each pay table contains its own unique set of winning hands, you’ll mostly be looking to make the following hands:
You have to realize that the hands toward the top of the list are easier to achieve, but they also pay the least. There might be times where it’s wise to take a chance of making one of the rarer hands, since they pay much more. Striking the balance between risk and reward is the key to video poker success.
Once you decide on the cards that you want to hold (if any), you’ll hit the screen (or the button) corresponding to them to indicate that. Any cards that you leave alone will be replaced by cards once you hit the “draw” button. When you do this, the hand is complete, so you must make sure you don’t leave out any cards you want to hold.
The draw completes the hand. Any winnings that you earn from the hand will be added at that time. You won’t lose any more from your bankroll at that time, since that will have been deducted at the beginning of the hand when you make your bet.
That is how basic video poker works. You can keep playing in that manner for as long as you have money to wager. Or you can cash out at any time as well.
You’ll see as we take a look at Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker how the knowledge of how to play a single hand will come into play. The extra features build off that to create something new and exciting.
The Spin Poker aspect of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker might seem comfortable to those who play multiline slot machines. For one thing, the 3 by 5 grid on the screen looks just like most of those slots. And, like on multiline slots, you can win based on many different combinations horizontally and vertically on the screen.
Regardless of how many lines you bet, you’ll see a single deal on the screen. This deal will show up in the middle line. You will then make your decisions about what to hold and discard based on this hand, just as if you were playing a single hand.
This decision will then be repeated for the lines above and below the center line. In other words, if you were to hold the first and third cards from left to right in the center line, those same cards would then show up in the same positions on the top and center line.
When it comes to draw in Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, you’ll still be drawing from the 47 cards left after the deal. But that single deck will be used to fill in all the spaces on the three lines where cards were discarded.
As we’ve said, you get to wager on either three, five, or nine lines. If you bet on three lines, you’ll be dealing with the three horizontal rows on the screen. This format looks like basic triple play poker.
But once you start raising the bet to five or nine lines, the combinations available for betting start to incorporate diagonal movements across the screen from left to right.
Here is what a five-line in Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker encompasses:
And here is what a nine-line wager will encompass:
You can imagine lines six and seven forming an “X” as they crossed the screen. Meanwhile, lines 8 and 9 might look to you something like a stock market graph, rising and falling. No matter how you visualize them, you’ll be able to recognize these patterns very easily.
Imagine that you’ve bet all nine lines while using a Jacks or Better pay table playing Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker. At the end of the draw, the screen looks like this:
Top Reel:
Middle Reel:
Bottom Reel:
We know what you have as far as the horizontal lines, since it’s easy to see. But since you bet nine lines, you’ll also see lines traced across the screen to highlight the other combinations that you’ve bet:
Upward V:
Downward V:
First and Second Card in Row 1, Middle Card in Row 2, Fourth and Fifth Card in Row 3:
First and Second Card in Row 3, Middle Card in Row 2, Fourth and Fifth Card in Row 1:
First, Third and Fifth Card in Row 2, Second Card in Row 1, Fourth Card in Row 3:
First, Third and Fifth Card in Row 2, Second Card in Row 3, Fourth Card in Row 1:
Of course, you don’t have to figure any of this out after the hand is over, since the game itself will dissect the different lines and compute your winnings. In addition, there really isn’t anything you need to do differently strategy-wise for the Spin Poker part of things. You should just concentrate on making the right choice for that initial deal as if you were playing a single hand.
In this instance, you ended up with nine different winning combinations in a single round of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker. Take a look, along with the payback you can expect from the Jacks or Better pay table on a five-coin wager:
In this single round, you return 125 coins. That’s minus the amount that you bet, either 90 coins if you used the Dream Card option or 45 coins if you didn’t. Regardless, you made a hefty profit.
That is one of the benefits of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker: A good deal or draw can really boost your bankroll in a way that playing one hand at a time couldn’t. Of course, the flipside is that if you get poor five-card combinations across the three lines, you could end up losing a lot more in one fell swoop.
The Dream Card option in Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker is activated if you wager 10 coins per hand. This opens up the possibility that you’ll receive a Dream Card on the deal, always in the far-right position. And the advantage is that you can change the Dream Card into whatever card improves your hand the most.
This concept is similar to what you can expect in wild card play. The difference is that wild cards, like the twos in Deuces Wild, will only change over officially to another card at the end of the hand. You can speculate how they might be used when you get one on the deal, but the draw might change the way that the wild card should be transformed based on the new information.
With Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, you have to decide what the Dream Card will be before the draw. It cannot be changed at that point, regardless of whatever happens on the draw. As a result, it is slightly less valuable than a wild card.
The other thing you need to know about Dream Cards is that you won’t get one on every hand. It differs depending on what pay table you’re using, but you can expect to see a Dream Card about 50% of the time, or one out of every two hands, when playing Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker.
Once you receive a Dream Card in Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, you can hold it and it will be repeated in all three lines. Since it’s in the same position in the three rows, it will be a part of every line that you wager.
Imagine that you receive the following five-card deal in the center line while playing Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker:
This hand presents many interesting possibilities. What you’ll find is that your decision on the Dream Card will then often dictate the cards that you wish to hold.
If you imagined the Dream Card to be another ace, you would be looking at a pair of aces. That’s a winning combination, one that will end up being a part of however many lines you bet, regardless of what happens on the draw.
You might also choose to make the Dream Card a three or a seven. By doing that, you’d have four cards of consecutive rank if you were to hold the four though six. In this scenario, you’d drop the ace, which would mean giving up a sure-thing winning hand for the chance at the straight.
One other possibility would be to use the Dream Card in conjunction with the five and six of hearts. By doing this, you’d be giving yourself a three-card stretch of suited connectors, which would put you in range of the straight flush. Many other winning hands would be open to you as well with these three cards as the foundation.
Let’s play this hand out to show how the Dream Card differs from a wild card. Let’s assume that you hold on to the five and six of hearts and change the Dream Card into the seven of hearts. On the draw you receive the following:
Top Line:
Middle Line:
Bottom Line:
You can see that you ended up with three of a kind in the middle line and a flush in the bottom line. Meanwhile, on the top line, you came up empty.
If the Dream Card had been a wild card, you wouldn’t have had to declare the card as a seven of hearts. As a result, you would have won the top line as well, since the wild card would have become a five to give you three of a kind.
Doubling your max bet to get access to the Dream Card in Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker is a big financial commitment. This is especially true because you’ll still only be paid based on a five-coin wager, and you won’t get a wild card on about half the hands you play. But the increased opportunities the Dream Card will give you to make winning hands will make making the extra bet worth it in the long run.
As we said above, Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker allows you to choose between pay tables. Below is a sampling of those pay table families that you might be able to find in casinos or in online versions of the game.
The pay tables listed generally represent the highest-paying versions you can find. It’s possible you won’t be able to locate these full-pay tables and you might have to take a discount. But by knowing where the full-pay levels are, you can then assess if the particular pay table you find is close enough to them to be worth playing.
Take a look.
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind (aces) | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s) | 40 | 80 | 120 | 160 | 200 |
Four of a kind (any other) | 20 | 40 | 60 | 80 | 100 |
Full house | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 40 |
Flush | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 24 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 2,000 | 4,000 | 6,000 | 8,000 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind (aces) | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s) | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
Four of a kind (any other) | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
Flush | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 |
Straight | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four aces without any 2,3,4 | 400 | 800 | 1,200 | 1,600 | 2,000 |
Four 2s, 3s, 4s without any A,2,3,4 | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
Four aces | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
Four 2s, 3s, 4s | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
Four 5s through Ks | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Pair of jacks + | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind – aces | 240 | 480 | 720 | 960 | 1,200 |
Four of a kind – 2s, 3s, or 4s | 120 | 240 | 360 | 480 | 600 |
Four of a kind – 5s through kings | 75 | 150 | 225 | 300 | 375 |
Full house | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 |
Flush | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 |
Straight | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Two pairs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Pair of kings or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 4,000 |
Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Four of a kind – aces 2, 3, 4 kicker | 800 | 1,600 | 2,400 | 3,200 | 4,000 |
Four of a kind – 2s, 3s, or 4s A, 2, 3, or 4 kicker | 400 | 800 | 1,200 | 1,600 | 2,000 |
Four of a kind – aces 5s – Ks kicker | 160 | 320 | 480 | 640 | 800 |
Four of a kind – 2s, 3s, or 4s 5s – Ks kicker | 80 | 160 | 240 | 320 | 400 |
Four of a kind – any other | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
Flush | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 |
Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Three of a kind | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
Two pairs | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Pair of jacks + | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
Four deuces | 200 | 400 | 600 | 800 | 1,000 |
Wild royal flush | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
Five of a kind | 16 | 32 | 48 | 64 | 80 |
Straight flush | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 |
Four of a kind | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Full house | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
Flush | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
Straight | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
Three of a kind | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
As we said above, you shouldn’t mess with basic video poker strategy to adjust for the Spin Poker format. There is really no way to strategize for the different lines moving up and down and across the screen. Your best strategy is just to focus on the single line in middle of the screen as if it were the only hand you were playing.
But the Dream Card aspect of Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker creates some interesting strategic dilemmas. Not only do you have to decide which cards to hold and discard, but you also have to worry about what the Dream Card will be. That adds an extra layer to the proceedings.
Most Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker machines and online games have a feature where they make a suggestion as to which card the Dream Card should become. The problem is that this suggestion might not always synch up with the best strategic move. Although you can get away with following this suggestion most of the time, there might be times when doing so will reduce the hand’s expected value.
If you reduce the expected value, you’re hurting your potential payback percentage, which is something you never want to do. It won’t matter as much if you’re a casual player, since the luck of the cards that you receive will have more of an impact on your winning and losing than any decision you make.
But if you do want to play Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker with regularity, you should try to figure out the best choices for the Dream Card on all occasions. You could do this by finding video poker training resources that allow you to include a Dream Card aspect. Or you could just use typical training resources which tell you the best cards to hold then imagine the Dream Card as the best card to add to those held cards.
It can get tricky for sure. If you do want to learn ideal strategy for Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, you should first concentrate on one or two pay tables that you plan to play the most. You should then take advantage of one of these two training methods.
Training software lets you learn ideal strategy through repetition. You play sample hands over and over at the pay table of your choice. The software will let you know each time that you’re wrong based on the math.
After you’ve done this for a while, the right plays in every situation will become second nature. Software might be a better choice for Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker, since it might let you adjust the instruction based on the special feature. In any case, if you practice enough, you should be able to achieve perfect play.
If you’re looking for a quicker fix than training software, strategy charts can be just the thing for you. Once you memorize a strategy chart, you’ll be able to make the right plays on every deal that you receive. That can be easier said than done, however, as there are many different card combinations on a typical chart.
These combinations are ranked according to their value on the deal. Once you have the chart memorized, you’ll be able to recognize the most valuable combination in each deal you receive. And you’ll know what to discard accordingly to get the most out of the hand.
Spin Poker With Dream Card video poker comes on like an extremely complicated version of the game. But in reality, it’s all just a matter of concentrating on the single deal in front of you. If you get good cards and make proper decisions, the reward you can earn from this game could be massive.
Spin Poker looks a lot like a standard 3-line multi-play video poker game, but it has some significant differences.
The main hand is in the center line, and the other 2 lines are located above and below that line. When you decide which cards to keep and which cards to throw away, those cards are kept above and below, too.
But the cards are dealt from one deck with 47 cards left in it, which makes it impossible to get the same results on all 3 hands.
All video poker games share certain gameplay features. You can find detailed explanation of those in our main video poker page. But I’ll share the basics here, too:
You start by placing a bet of between 1 and 5 coins. You should always go with the 5-coin bet, though, because that activates a higher payout on a royal flush. If you bet 1, 2, 3, or 4 coins, a royal flush pays off at 250 to 1. But when you bet 5 coins, the hand pays off at 800 to 1. It’s a significant difference that affects your bottom line over time.
Once you’ve placed your bet, you press the “deal” button, and the game deals you a 5 card poker hand. You can choose to keep or discard any, none, or all of the cards in front of you.
The computer deals you replacement cards for the ones you’ve discarded, and you get paid off based on the strength of your hand. These payoffs are detailed on the pay table for the game.
Some games are “multi-play” games, where you get the opportunity to play 3, 5, 10, or even 50 hands at a time. They all start with the same 5-card hand, but you get fresh deals on each line from a fresh 52 card deck. That’s where Spin Poker deviates from the norm. The cards are dealt from one 47 card deck, and they’re dealt from left to right in the discard spots.
Spin Poker, like many video poker variations, is just a variation that’s stapled onto an existing video poker game like Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild. It has a different name because of the 3-lines and the way the cards are dealt and replaced after the discard phase of the game.
Since this is the case, the pay tables and odds for Spin Poker are based on the base game.
If you’re playing Jacks or Better with a 9/6 pay table and a 99.54% payback percentage, the same numbers hold true for the Spin Poker variation of the game. (The 9/6 refers to the payouts for the full house and the flush, respectively.)
There is a difference in the volatility of the game, though, because of the extra hands. You can expect bigger swings and longer losing streaks followed by occasional larger wins that make up for them. In the long run, you’ll lose money at about the same rate as you would in any other video poker game with these pay tables. It will just take longer for the long run to kick in. (And the long run takes a while to kick in anyway—longer than most people think. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of hands.)
We’ve covered pay tables and payback percentages in detail on a lot of our other pages, but we’ll include an example of a typical pay table below to give you an idea (in case you’re a novice). This example is for a 9/6 Jacks or Better game:
Hand | Return |
Royal flush | 800 to 1 |
Straight flush | 50 to 1 |
4 of a Kind | 25 to 1 |
Full house | 9 to 1 |
Flush | 6 to 1 |
Straight | 4 to 1 |
3 of a kind | 3 to 1 |
2 pairs | 2 to 1 |
A pair of jacks or better | even money |
This is also called a “full pay” Jacks or Better game because it’s the best common version of the game. The payback percentage for this version of the game, assuming you make the correct holding/drawing decisions on every hand, is 99.54%. The payback percentage is the amount of each bet that the casino expects to pay back in winnings over the long run (hundreds of thousands of hands).
Here’s how the payback percentage is used to calculate the expected profit on a machine:
You multiply the cost per hand by the number of bets you’re making per hour. You then multiply that by the payback percentage to get the amount paid back to the player in winnings. Subtract that from the amount bet per hour and you get the expected hourly loss.
Let’s say you’re playing the 9/6 game above. You’re placing 15 coins in action on each hand (3 hands X 5 coins per hand). Assuming you’re playing a quarter game, that’s $3.75 per hand. You’re going to average probably 600 hands per hour, so 600 X $3.75 = $2250 per hour. But the casino expects to pay you back winnings of $2250 X 99.54%, or $2239.65. You’re expected to lose the difference, $2250 – $2239.65, or $10.35 per hour.
But keep in mind that’s a long term expectation. In the short run, you’ll see a higher loss rate than that (probably) because you only see a royal flush once every 40,000 hands or so. The 800 to 1 payout for that hand makes up a lot of the return percentage.
The strategy for Spin Poker is exactly the same as it is for the base game. You can find strategy tables for almost all of the base games available on the appropriate game-specific page on our site. If you’ve never used a video poker strategy chart before, here’s how one works:
You’re given a list of possibilities from best to worst. You compare them to what’s on your list and keep the first one that applies to your hand. The royal flush is always at the top, because it’s a pat hand that pays off more than any other hand. The correct strategy choice with that hand is to hold all 5 cards and collect your winnings.
Most “pat hands”—hands that pay off without having to be improved—are held, but not in every case and not in every game. Sometimes you’ll throw away a winning hand to try to draw to a much better hand.
A game where you have a pair of jacks but also a draw to a royal flush. If you hold the pair, you’re guaranteed an even money payout. But if you draw to the royal flush, you have a 1/47 chance of winning 800 to 1. The difference in expected value is tremendous over time.
Spin Poker Deluxe is essentially the same game as Spin Poker with the addition of more pay lines. As with Spin Poker, your strategy doesn’t change, and the payback percentages don’t change. The only difference is in terms of standard deviation and volatility. In Spin Poker Deluxe, you’re dealing with 20 pay lines, which increases the chance of getting a paying hand every time you play. The difference is that you pay for each of those lines, which increases the amount of money you have in action, too.
Spin Poker with Dream Card is the same game as Spin Poker, but for an extra 5 credits, you get the “Dream Card” option activated. To activate this option, you place 5 additional coins on your bet. When you get your initial hand, you get 4 cards plus a “dream card”, which is similar to (but not exactly the same as) a wild card. The game suggests which card would be best for you, but you have the option to change it. (And sometimes you should – Michael Shackleford suggests that sometimes the game gives the wrong advice.)
Spin Poker is an interesting fusion of a couple of different slot machine concepts with video poker play. It also resembles multi-line video poker games in some interesting ways. The nice thing about this game is that the odds and strategies are the same as for the base game, so you don’t have to learn anything new. The only disadvantage is the increased volatility, which might or might not be a problem for you. It depends on your temperament.