Multi-Hand Video Poker, Ultimate X, and Spin Poker

Master multi-hand video poker, Ultimate X, and Spin Poker. Learn how extra lines, multipliers, and grids change costs and swings.

Multi-hand games, Ultimate X and Spin Poker keep the five-card draw of regular video poker and change two things: how many hands you play from one deal and what that deal costs. This guide explains how Triple Play through One Hundred Play work, what extra lines do to the cost and the swings, how Ultimate X multipliers are earned and carried, how Spin Poker shares one deck across a grid, what a progressive royal flush prize does to the return and what the double up feature really is. Figures come from our own count of every possible hand unless the text names a published source.

How Multi-Hand Video Poker Works

In a multi-hand game you are dealt one set of five cards and choose your holds once. The game plays that hold on every line: the held cards are copied to each line, and each line draws its own replacements, separately from the others, from the cards that were not dealt. Every line is read against the same pay table and paid on its own. The common sizes are Triple Play, Five Play, Ten Play, Fifty Play and One Hundred Play, named for the number of lines. The bet is placed on every line, so ten lines cost ten times as much as one.

Take the deal from our worked hand with two kings: K♥ K♣ 7♦ 4♠ 2♥ in 9/6 Jacks or Better. The best hold is still the two kings. In Ten Play each of the ten lines draws three cards from the same 47 unseen cards, so ten different final hands appear. Every line has the chances of the single hand: 71.3% finish with just the kings, 16.0% with two pair, 11.4% with three kings, 1.0% with a full house and 0.3% with four kings. Each line returns 1.54 on average for every coin bet, so the ten lines together return 15.37. One deal can land far from that: in 3.4% of these deals every line ends with only the pair of kings, and in 2.7% at least one line makes four kings.

The held cards are the same on every line and the draws are not. That one fact explains most of what follows: more lines multiply the money at stake and the number of chances for big hands, but every line still depends on the same five dealt cards.

What Extra Lines Do to Cost and Swings

Every extra line is a full extra bet. The table assumes five $0.25 coins on each line, a $1.25 bet per line, and shows what one deal costs and how far one deal can swing. The swing is one standard deviation of the total result of a deal, worked out exactly for 9/6 Jacks or Better.

Read the last two columns together. The swing in dollars grows with every line because you are wagering more, but it grows more slowly than the stake: Ten Play wagers ten times as much as a single hand and swings only 4.4 times as much. The reason is that the lines share the deal. The square of the swing, called the variance, is 19.51 for one 9/6 hand, and 1.97 of it comes from the five cards you are dealt, which every line shares. The other 17.55 comes from the draw, which is separate on each line. More lines average out the draw and never the deal, so the swing relative to the stake falls from 4.42 toward a floor of 1.40, and One Hundred Play is already at 1.46.

The return does not change. Every line is an ordinary hand on the same pay table, so 9/6 Jacks or Better still costs $4.56 for every $1,000 wagered whether you play one line or a hundred. What changes is how fast money moves. At the single-hand pace of 600 deals an hour, Ten Play at $1.25 a line wagers $7,500 an hour, with an expected cost of $34.21, and even if each deal took twice as long the hour would still wager $3,750. Multi-hand games come in the same families as single-hand games, such as Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker and Deuces Wild, each with its own pay tables, so read the table on the screen before you read the line count.

Four to a Royal Flush on Many Lines

The royal flush is the hand multi-hand games are known for, and the arithmetic is simple. Dealt four cards to a royal flush, the best hold is to keep the four and draw one card. On each line one of the 47 unseen cards completes the royal, a 1 in 47 chance, so the chance that at least one line completes it grows with the line count:

Each completed line pays the full royal flush prize, $1,000 on a five-coin line at $0.25 coins. But a deal with four cards to a royal flush is itself rare, about one in 2,800, so the table describes a hand you will seldom see. Over many deals the extra lines add royal flush chances in proportion to the extra money wagered, which is why they do not change the return.

Ultimate X: Double the Stake, Carry a Multiplier

Ultimate X is an optional feature from IGT on Triple Play, Five Play and Ten Play games. A maximum bet of 10 coins on each line, double the usual five, switches it on. In Ultimate X mode any paying hand pays at once and also earns a multiplier for the following hand in the same position, meaning the same line. You do not have to pay for the feature to use a multiplier you have already earned. The size of the multiplier depends on the game, the hand and the number of lines. The table shows the Jacks or Better multipliers as the Wizard of Odds lists them from IGT’s own tables.

A short example shows how it works. Suppose a Ten Play line finishes with a flush. The table gives a multiplier of 11 for that line’s next hand. If the next hand is a pair of jacks, which pays 5 coins, it is paid 55 coins instead of 5. If the next hand pays nothing, the multiplier has nothing to multiply. At $0.25 coins the feature raises the cost of a line from $1.25 to $2.50, and a Ten Play deal from $12.50 to $25.00.

The Wizard of Odds also lists the return with the feature for four Jacks or Better tables, 8/6, 8/5, 7/5 and 6/5. The full-pay 9/6 table is not among them:

The pay table still decides the price. At Ten Play the 8/6 table returns 99.42% and the 6/5 table returns 95.67%. The best hold can also depend on the multipliers waiting on each line, so a chart for the plain game is not exact, although the Wizard of Odds notes that one fixed strategy for each game comes close. Because earned multipliers stay on the game until they are used, decide where you will stop before you start. The Wizard of Odds advises against leaving a game that still shows multipliers: stop after a deal where every line loses, or play a last deal at five coins per line to use them. Our guide on how to choose which cards to hold covers the strategy side.

Spin Poker: A Grid That Shares One Deck

Spin Poker is played on a grid of 15 positions, five columns by three rows. After the bet, five cards are dealt to the middle row and you choose your holds as in regular video poker. Each card you hold is copied to the top and bottom rows of the same column, and when you draw, the empty positions are filled from the 47 undealt cards, and no drawn card is used twice. Every active payline is then paid as a separate poker hand. You choose how many lines to play, up to nine, and the total bet is the bet per line multiplied by the number of lines.

The difference from Ten Play is the deck. Spin Poker fills every line from one set of 47 cards, while a ten-line multi-hand game draws each line from its own set. The Wizard of Odds notes that the odds and the strategy are the same as in conventional video poker for the same game and pay table, so the return per line does not change. The lines do depend on each other far more. Las Vegas Advisor writes that you will go longer between royal flushes in Spin Poker than in Ten Play, but that when they come they arrive in clumps.

The swings show it. The Wizard of Odds states the swing of the whole result in line bets, divided by the square root of the number of lines, so independent lines would read 4.42, the figure for one 9/6 Jacks or Better hand, whatever their number. Five multi-hand lines that share only the dealt cards read 5.23 and nine read 5.94, while Spin Poker, whose lines share the draw as well, reads 5.90 with five lines and 7.28 with nine. Same return, rougher ride.

Progressive Royal Flush Games

In a progressive game the royal flush prize is a meter that grows as the game is played, so the top prize on the screen changes from visit to visit instead of staying at 800 for each coin. A higher meter raises the return of the whole game, and our exact count shows by how much. On 9/6 Jacks or Better, a royal flush paying 900 for each coin returns 99.80%, paying 976 returns 100.00% and paying 1,000 returns 100.07%. Each extra 100 for each coin adds about a quarter of a percentage point.

The table shows the smallest royal flush prize that lifts each Jacks or Better pay table to break-even with perfect play, assuming the other rows stay the same.

The table is a warning as much as a guide. A meter that reaches break-even on a 9/6 game is far from it on an 8/5 game, which needs a royal flush near 1,734 for each coin. Even at break-even the average is carried by a hand that arrives only about once in every 40,000 hands, so a long wait is the normal experience and not a sign that the meter is due. Before you rely on a meter, check the pay table under it, the coins needed to qualify for it and the rules on how the prize is paid.

The Double Up Side Gamble

Some video poker games offer a double up after a win: you may risk the win on a card comparison, and a win doubles it. It is a separate bet with its own odds, not a row on the pay table, and the rules differ from game to game, so read the screen before you use it. The details that matter are how ties are treated and whether the gamble can be repeated.

Take the simplest version as an illustration, not as the rule of any one game: you and the dealer each get one card from a fresh 52-card deck, ace high, and the higher card wins. You win 8 times in 17, lose 8 times in 17 and tie 1 time in 17. If a tie returns your win, the average result of the gamble is zero. If a tie loses, the gamble costs 5.9% of the amount you risk each time.

Either way the gamble can only keep a win, double it or lose it, so it makes a session rougher without making the game cheaper. The moment right after a win can also be the hardest moment to say no, so decide before you play whether you will ever use it.

Which Format Does What

Whichever format you pick, the first question is the same: what does one deal cost in total, and what is the pay table under it? Our pay table checklist shows how to answer the second half.

Continue With the Video Poker Series

This guide is one of eight in the video poker hub. Pick the next topic from the list below:

• the video poker starter guide: the deal, the hold and the draw, with one hand worked out in full.
• how to read a video poker pay table: from the royal flush row down to a pair of jacks.
• Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, and Double Bonus: how each version rewards four of a kind and what that does to the return.
• the wild card video poker guide: full-pay and short-pay Deuces Wild, Loose Deuces and Kings or Better Joker Poker.
• video poker RTP, volatility, and bankroll: what the return means in dollars per hour and how far real sessions stray.
• the video poker hold guide: a ranked list of holds with worked examples and exact values.
• the regulation and fairness guide: random decks, pay table honesty and the tools licensed casinos offer.

Total Stake, Not Line Bet, Sets the Budget

Multi-hand games, multipliers and grids are paid entertainment like every other form of video poker. They raise the amount wagered on each deal and the size of the swings, they do not remove the expected cost and none of them can promise a profit. Set your budget as a total stake per deal, not as a line bet, decide how many deals it covers and use the deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion tools described on our responsible gaming page.

Author:

Lucas Portela

Owner, BoldGambler • Avanhandava/SP

Oddsmaker, affiliate and content creator in the iGaming industry.

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