9/6 vs 6/5: the pay table that costs you 11 times as much per hour

Look at two Jacks or Better machines side by side and you may see no difference at all. Same cards, same buttons, same royal flush at the top. But one returns 99.54% of what you bet with perfect play, and the other returns 95.00%. At a normal pace, the second one costs you about 11 times as much per hour.

The difference is two small numbers on the pay table: what a full house and a flush pay.

Read the two numbers that matter

Every Jacks or Better pay table lists the same hands, from a royal flush down to a pair of jacks. Almost all of them pay the same everywhere:

Casinos tune the game with the full house and flush lines. A "9/6" machine pays 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. A "6/5" machine pays 6 and 5. Look at the one-coin column: that is all you need to identify the game.

All six tables side by side

With perfect strategy at max bet, at 600 hands an hour and $1.25 a hand (five quarters):

The returns come from the exact combination counts published by Wizard of Odds, which the Perfect Hold engine reproduces exactly. Cost per hour is 600 × $1.25 × (1 − return). The 6/5 cost divided by the 9/6 cost is 10.97, which is where the "11×" comes from.

Every row costs money. No common Jacks or Better table returns more than 100%, even with perfect play. The table decides how fast you lose, not whether you do.

Why a small change costs so much

Full houses and flushes are not rare. With perfect 9/6 strategy you finish with a full house about once every 87 hands and a flush about once every 91 hands. That is roughly 11.5 full houses and 11.0 flushes per 1,000 hands.

Cut the full house from 9 to 6 and the flush from 6 to 5, and you lose 3 coins on every full house and 1 coin on every flush. Per hand, that is about 3 × 1.15% + 1 × 1.10% ≈ 4.55% of your bet: almost exactly the gap between 99.54% and 95.00%.

A royal flush, by contrast, comes about once every 40,391 hands. At 600 hands an hour that is roughly one every 67 hours of play. The pays you see every hour matter more than a jackpot you might see once in 67 hours.

Does the strategy change?

A little. On every table you still keep high pairs, draw to four-card royals and keep two pair. But the order of some close holds shifts. On 8/5 at max bet, for example, a three-card straight flush with one gap and no high cards drops below unsuited J-Q, which it beats on 9/6: with 5♥ 6♥ 8♥ J♣ Q♦ you hold the hearts on 9/6 and J-Q on 8/5. Flushes pay less on 8/5, so flush draws are worth less. Every pay table, and every short bet, has its own exact strategy.

The Jacks or Better strategy calculator lets you switch the pay table and see whether the best hold for a hand changes.

What to do with this

1. Before you sit down, read the full house and flush pays in the one-coin column.
2. Prefer 9/6. If you only find 8/5 or worse, know that you are paying for the entertainment at a much higher rate, and set your budget for that.
3. If you play, bet five coins: the royal pays 800 per coin at max bet and only 250 per coin at one to four coins.
4. Learn the strategy for the table you play. Pick the table first, then learn its strategy: no amount of skill turns 6/5 into 9/6.