Machines that pay on kings instead of jacks

Every paytable names its threshold twice — in the title over the machine, and in the smallest row at the bottom of the chart. Usually it says Jacks or Better. Some machines say Kings or Better, and the two charts can otherwise look alike enough that the difference reads like a detail: two ranks, one row, the one-coin payout. It is the largest change you can make to a machine without altering another number on it.

What the bottom row controls

The threshold decides which ranks pay when you pair them, and nothing else. A qualifying pair is worth the same wherever the line sits: hold two jacks on a Jacks or Better machine, two kings on a Kings or Better machine, or two tens on a Tens or Better machine, and the three-card draw is worth 1.5365 coins per coin staked in all three cases on 9/6 rows. What the threshold changes is how often that hand turns up.

Exactly one pair and nothing better arrives on 42.2569% of deals, and the pair's rank is spread evenly across the thirteen ranks, so the qualifying share is a plain count: four ranks in thirteen at jacks, two in thirteen at kings. Raising the line two ranks halves the paying pairs. The last column is what changes the feel of the game — on a Jacks or Better machine about one deal in seven arrives with nothing in it worth keeping, and on a Kings or Better machine it is two in five.

What it costs

The pair row is one of the three big blocks of return on a Jacks or Better chart. On 9/6 it lands on 21.46% of final hands and pays one coin, so it carries 21.46 of the 99.54 points — behind two pair at 25.86 and three of a kind at 22.33, and almost exactly equal to the full house, flush and straight rows added together.

Take the jacks and queens out of that row and you remove around half of those points. Correct play wins a little back — with two ranks dead you throw five cards away more often, and you keep low pairs you would otherwise have broken — but nowhere near all of it. A 9/6 chart with the threshold at kings would return somewhere near ninety per cent, worse than any short-pay Jacks or Better you are likely to sit down at.

Why these are joker games

Which is why almost every machine that pays on kings has 53 cards in it. Joker Poker adds one wild card, worth far more than the two ranks the threshold removes: four of a kind, full houses and straight flushes stop being rare, and five of a kind becomes a row in its own right.

The full-pay version is a Kings or Better chart paying 800 for a natural royal, 200 for five of a kind, 100 for a wild royal, 50 for a straight flush, 20 for four of a kind, 7 for a full house, 5 for a flush, 3 for a straight, 2 for three of a kind, and 1 for two pair or a pair of kings. Played correctly it returns about 100.65%, which puts it on the short list of machines with a theoretical edge to the player.

Read the bottom of that chart rather than the top. Two pair pays 1 where Jacks or Better pays 2, and three of a kind pays 2 where it pays 3. The frequent hands are shaved to pay for the joker, and the threshold shaves them again — rarer, larger hands and longer quiet stretches.

What changes in the play

Dealt K♠ J♥ 8♦ 6♣ 3♠, here is every sensible hold on 9/6 rows at each threshold. Same five cards, same 47 left in the deck, only the bottom row moved.

Four things in that table are worth more than the headline.

1. The correct hold flips. At jacks you keep both high cards, at 0.4940. At kings you keep the king on its own, at 0.4207, and throw the jack away with the rest.
2. The jack was the better card and becomes the worst. At jacks it beats the king, 0.4726 against 0.4579, because a jack sits in four possible straights and a king in only two. At kings it is the least useful card in the hand.
3. A lone jack stops being a hold at all. It is worth 0.2665 against 0.2619 for throwing all five away, and on other junk hands the gap goes either way by a few thousandths. The jack is not a marginal keep; it is worth nothing.
4. A pair of jacks becomes a low pair. Worth 0.8237, exactly what a pair of fives is worth. You still hold it and still draw three to it, but it is no longer a made hand — the hands you might build from it are the whole reason to keep it.

The same row moved the other way

Tens or Better machines move the line down instead: five paying ranks, 20 high cards, a qualifying lone pair on 16.25% of deals. A lone ten there is worth 0.5149 against 0.3795 for drawing five — a better hold than a lone jack ever is on Jacks or Better, because a ten is both a paying rank and the bottom of a royal. The bill turns up in the rows above, which typically pay 6 for a full house and 5 for a flush rather than 9 and 6.

Which is the habit worth taking away: read the bottom row first, the full house and flush rows second. Between them they account for most of what any of these machines returns.