Double Pay Spin Poker

Double Pay Spin Poker is an example of a video poker variation that just grafts some new gameplay elements on top of an existing poker game. We have a detailed treatment of Double Pay Poker on its own page here, but in a nutshell, the gist of Double Pay Poker is that you make 2 bets per hand and get 2 payoffs—a payoff for the hand you’re dealt and another for the hand you wind up with after discarding.

We also have a detailed treatment of Spin Poker on our site. In another nutshell, the idea behind Spin Poker is that you get 3 rows of cards. Your hand is the middle row, and just like regular video poker, you get to discard between 0 and 5 cards. Whichever cards you keep are duplicated on the other 2 rows. Then you’re dealt replacement cards from a 47 card deck.

If Spin Poker sounds a little bit like multi-line video poker, well, that’s because it IS similar to that game. But there’s a big difference.

In multi-line poker, all the hands are played more or less independently during the drawing phase of the game. The replacement cards are each dealt from a separate deck.

But in Spin Poker, one deck is used to fill in all the spots. It’s a subtle difference, but it makes a difference, especially mathematically. For example, it makes it impossible to be dealt 4 of a kind on all 3 rows. Being dealt in a pattern from left to right and top to bottom simulates a sort of spinning action, hence the name.

Double Pay Spin Poker might not be the best game for a new video poker player to start with, but it does have a high hit rate, so it is a lot of fun. It’s just that the game blends and combines so many different concepts from so many different variations that some players might think it’s overwhelmingly complicated.

But if you break down the various game-play elements, it becomes easier to understand.

That’s what we’re going to try to do in this how to play Double Pay Spin Poker tutorial.

We’ll start by explaining the basics of video poker that are common to all games. The first thing you should understand is that video poker is a video game version of draw poker combined with solitaire (sorta). You play by yourself, and you get your payouts based on the hand you wind up with. You’re dealt an initial 5 card hand, and you get a chance to keep or discard any card you’re dealt. The value of your final hand determines your payout.

The most basic form of video poker is Jacks or Better, which simulates a 52 card deck with no wild cards. The highest possible payout in this game is for the royal flush, which pays off at 800 to 1. The lowest possible payout in the game is for a pair of jacks or higher, which pays off at even money.

Other variations start changing the payoffs for various hands, but they also often start including wild cards. Deuces Wild, for example, is similar to Jacks or Better, but with 4 wild cards, the values of the final hands vary significantly. Joker Poker, on the other hand, is deal from a simulated 53 card deck, which includes a single wild card—the joker.

Here’s what we mean by that:

On a slot machine game, you get paid off based on combinations of symbols. Video poker is the same, but the symbols are playing cards.

On a slot machine, you have no way of knowing what the probability is of getting a particular combination of symbols. But since video poker is based on a deck of cards, we can calculate the odds of being dealt any given hand.

Once you know the payout for a combination and the odds of hitting that combination, you can calculate the game’s house edge. We talk about more about the house edge and the payback percentage in the next section about pay tables.

If you bet 4 coins or fewer, your payout for a royal flush is reduced to 250 to 1. That makes a big difference in your odds and payback percentage.

In Double Pay Poker, you have to place the bet twice, because you’re getting paid off twice. You have a 5 coin bet on your hand on the deal, and you have another 5 coins bet on your hand after drawing. The payoffs on the hands you’re initially dealt are correspondingly higher, because they’re harder to hit. (It’s easier to get a royal flush if you’re dealt a 5 card hand and then have the opportunity to discard some of them and draw new cards.)

The Spin Poker aspect is the other wrinkle, but I think we covered that pretty clearly above. But one thing to keep in mind is that you have to bet on each of those 3 rows, which increases your bet size dramatically. Assuming you’re wagering 5 coins (which you should be), you’re placing a 10 coin wager on 3 lines, for a total of 30 coins bet per hand. That’s $7.50 per hand on a quarter machine and $30 per hand on a dollar machine.

The pay table is what determines the payback percentage and the house edge for each machine. In the case of “Double Pay” games, you actually have 2 pay tables—one for the hand prior to the drawing phase and one for the hand after. The amounts on these payouts are different, reflecting the different odds of winding up with a hand without getting to discard and draw more cards.

Since we know the odds of winding up with a particular hand, we can use that information along with the payoff for each hand to derive the expected payback percentage for the game. That’s just a matter of multiplication. If you know that you have a roughly 20% chance of getting a hand (a pair of jacks or higher, for example), and you know that the hand pays off even money, you know that the expected return is 20%. Add the expected return up for all the possible outcomes, and you have the payback percentage for the machine.

That’s just a long term expectation expressed as a percentage that shows what the casino expects to win every time you place a bet. For example, on a so-called full pay Jacks or Better game, the payback percentage is 99.54%. That means that every time you spend $100, the casino expects to pay you $99.54 in winnings and expects to win 46 cents for itself.

You can find full pay tables for Double Pay poker on the deal on our page about Double Pay poker, but know this—the payoffs for the various hands on the deal are higher than they are after the drawing phase. That’s because it’s harder to get a hand dealt to you on an initial deal.

The pay tables for the hands you get after the drawing phase are the same as they would be for whatever variation the Double Pay and Spin options were tacked onto. So if you’re playing Double Play Spin Poker on a Jacks or Better game, the payback percentage and the pay tables would be the same as they would be for any other Jacks or Better game.

The only real difference is that your overall payback percentage becomes an average of the payback percentage on the bet on the initial deal and the payback percentage on your final hand.

Video poker strategy tables are all similar. They’re arranged as a list of hands in order of desirability. You go down the list, comparing the hands on your list to what you have. The highest ranked hand that matches yours is the one you keep—you throw the other cards away.

There is no strategy involved in getting your payout on your initial hand. You put in your money and hope for the best.

The strategy comes into play when you’re deciding which cards to keep and which ones to throw away. But in that respect, you can just follow the strategy for whichever version of the game you’re playing. If you’re playing Double Pay Spin Deuces Wild, you would just visit our Deuces Wild page and use the strategy there.

Double Pay Spin Poker is a fun variation on regular video poker, but unlike most variations, it doesn’t have a different pay table or a different number of wild cards. It actually layers 2 different variations on top of standard video poker games—the payout on the initial deal and the variation on multihand poker. The first is what makes it “Double Pay”, and the second is what makes it “Spin”.

Both variations increase your hit ratio, but the Spin Poker aspect of the game also increases the standard deviation. The additional bets and the additional lines make this game more expensive to play, even if you find it in a lower denomination. But if you can afford it, Double Pay Spin Poker is a lot of fun.