Look at the machine's pay table for a single coin. Every Jacks or Better schedule pays the same for a royal, quads and the rest; casinos change two lines, and those two lines are the whole game.
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Published return: — · house edge —
Expected cost of this session: —
The schedules you will meet
| Pay table | Full house | Flush | Published return | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/6 Jacks or Better | 9 | 6 | 99.54% | Full pay. Increasingly rare. |
| 9/5 Jacks or Better | 9 | 5 | 98.45% | One unit off the flush. |
| 8/6 Jacks or Better | 8 | 6 | 98.39% | One unit off the full house. |
| 8/5 Jacks or Better | 8 | 5 | 97.30% | The most common schedule on a casino floor. |
| 7/5 Jacks or Better | 7 | 5 | 96.15% | Common on low-denomination machines. |
| 6/5 Jacks or Better | 6 | 5 | 95.00% | Sometimes called 'short pay'. Avoid. |
Two machines standing side by side, identical in every other respect, can differ by more than four percentage points of return. Nothing on the cabinet announces it; the only tell is those two numbers.
What you are dealt, before you draw
These frequencies are derived here, by enumerating all 2,598,960 five-card deals:
| Dealt hand | Combinations | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 4 | 1 in 649,740 |
| Straight flush | 36 | 1 in 72,193 |
| Four of a kind | 624 | 1 in 4,165 |
| Full house | 3,744 | 1 in 694 |
| Flush | 5,108 | 1 in 509 |
| Straight | 10,200 | 1 in 255 |
| Three of a kind | 54,912 | 1 in 47 |
| Two pair | 123,552 | 1 in 21 |
| Jacks or better | 337,920 | 1 in 8 |
| Low pair | 760,320 | 1 in 3 |
Where the return figures come from
The return percentages above are attributed, not derived on this site. Computing a full-game return means evaluating all 32 hold decisions for every one of the 2,598,960 possible deals and following each draw to completion — beyond what a static build does. We enumerate the deals and the hold expected values; the published returns come from optimal-play analyses, and we say so rather than implying we produced them. The methodology page lists everything this site derives against everything it attributes.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What do 9/6 and 8/5 mean?
- The two payouts casinos change: 9/6 pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush per coin, 8/5 pays 8 and 5. Everything else on a Jacks or Better schedule is usually identical, which is why those two numbers name the machine.
- Are these returns computed on this site?
- No, and we would rather say so. Full-game returns require evaluating every hold for all 2,598,960 deals; they are attributed to published optimal-play analyses. The dealt-hand frequencies on this page are derived here.
- Does the return assume perfect play?
- Yes. Published returns are for optimal strategy on every hand. Ordinary play gives up roughly half a percentage point to two percentage points more, so the real gap between a good machine played well and a bad one played casually is wider than the table suggests.
- Is max coins worth it?
- On Jacks or Better the royal pays 800 for 1 only at max coins, against 250 for 1 below it. Playing under max coins costs about 1.4 percentage points, which is larger than the difference between most pay tables.
Dealt-hand frequencies are enumerated from all 2,598,960 five-card deals by this site's engine. Full-game return percentages are attributed to published optimal-play analyses, not derived here, and the page says so where they appear.