Pokies guide: how Australian pokies work, by the numbers

What pokies are

Pokies are poker machines: electronic gaming machines with spinning reels, the games called slot machines in most other countries. You will find them in Australian pubs, clubs and casinos, and online on offshore casino sites. The name comes from "poker machine", shortened the Aussie way.

The four numbers every pokies player should know

1. RTP (return to player). The share of all money bet that a game pays back over a very long run. A 92% game keeps $8 of every $100 bet on average.
2. Volatility. How the returns are spread out: lots of small wins (low) or rare big ones (high). Same RTP, very different sessions.
3. Turnover. Everything you bet in a session, including winnings you play back through. Your expected cost is turnover multiplied by the house edge.
4. Spin speed. More spins per hour means more turnover and a higher cost, even at the same bet.

The pokies calculator puts all four together and shows what an hour of play costs on average.

Pub pokies and online pokies

Pub and club pokies are licensed and tested by each state, which sets a legal minimum return. Online pokies cannot legally be offered to people in Australia under the Interactive Gambling Act, so the sites that offer them operate offshore without Australian rules or protections. We explain what that means for players in are online pokies legal in Australia.

Legal minimum returns by state

Each state sets the floor for pub, club and casino machines. These are the rules we have checked on official sources; the full figures, with losses by state, are on our pokies statistics page.

A legal minimum is a long run average across millions of spins. It tells you nothing about the next hour, and it does not apply to offshore online pokies at all.

What a session costs: a worked example

Say you bet $1 a spin and play 600 spins in an hour. Your turnover is $600. The house edge is 100% minus the RTP, so:

That is the average. Any single hour can land well above or below it, and volatility decides how far. Change the numbers to your own in the pokies calculator.

Pokies features, in one line each

• Paylines and ways. Lines are fixed patterns that pay left to right; "ways" pay matching symbols on adjacent reels in any row. Five reels of three rows give 3 to the power of 5, or 243 ways. See paylines and Megaways, where the number of symbols on each reel changes every spin and Big Time Gaming quotes up to 117,649 ways.
• Hold and spin. Coins lock in place while you get a few respins that reset when a new coin lands. Filling the grid is far rarer than it feels; our hold and spin guide shows the odds from a simple model.
• Progressive jackpots. A slice of every bet on linked machines feeds a shared pool. The progressive jackpots guide shows when a big pool changes the maths and when it does not.
• Bonus buy. Paying a multiple of your bet to jump straight to the feature. At the game's normal RTP it costs about the same per dollar as normal spins, but it puts far more money on one outcome; see bonus buy pokies.
• Famous pub titles. Lightning Link and Dragon Link are Aristocrat linked jackpot families built around the Hold & Spin feature.

Features and maths

• Pokies bonus features. Wilds, scatters and free spins, with maker examples and what each feature is worth.
• Cluster pays. Games that pay for groups of touching symbols instead of lines, with a worked grid that shows how clusters are counted.
• How to read a paytable. Line bet against total bet, the wild and scatter rules, the RTP line and the odds a paytable leaves out.
• Hit frequency. How often a pokie pays anything at all, the average size of a win and how long dry spells run, from maker data.
• Classic pokies. What makes a 3 reel game, with the full maths of one worked through.

Pokies game providers

Aristocrat is the maker behind the famous pub titles above, but online pokies mostly come from a different set of studios. Each guide covers who owns the maker, where it is licensed and the RTPs it publishes.

Popular pokies titles

Aristocrat venue classics. Big Red and its approved RTP settings, the tripled free games of Queen of the Nile, the hammer feature in Where's the Gold, the 1,024 ways of Buffalo, the choose-your-volatility free games in 5 Dragons, the Cash Express trains of 50 Lions and the Hall of Fame game More Chilli.

Online favourites from Pragmatic Play. Sweet Bonanza with its 6x5 pay-anywhere grid and 96.48% RTP, Gates of Olympus with Zeus's multipliers at 96.50%, and Big Bass Bonanza, where fisherman wilds collect fish values at a 96.71% RTP.

Three myths the rules rule out

1. "This machine is due." Regulators in Victoria and Queensland state that every spin is random and independent of the last. A machine that has not paid for an hour is no closer to paying; expecting otherwise is the gamblers fallacy.
2. "Near misses mean you were close." Two jackpot symbols and a blank is just another losing result, as random and independent as every other spin. It says nothing about the next one.
3. "A malfunction still owes me the win." Under the Victorian casino gaming machine rules published by Crown, a malfunction voids all plays and payments. Report it to staff straight away.

Start with these guides

New to the maths? Read how pokies work first, then pokies volatility to see why two games with the same RTP feel so different. If you are after a system, how to win on pokies is the honest answer: what you can control and the myths you can ignore.

In this section

Pokies 5 Dragons 5 Dragons hands you a choice most pokies keep hidden: how volatile your free games will be. Here is what Aristocrat says each part of the game does, what the ante bet costs, and what picking a dragon actually changes. Read more Pokies 50 Lions 50 Lions is one of the Aristocrat classics that keeps being rebuilt: first as a linked game, now as a Cash Express train game and a Hold & Spin title. Here is what each version does and what its approval records show. Read more Pokies Aristocrat pokies Aristocrat started in Sydney in the 1950s and now makes pokies for more than 300 jurisdictions. Here is how its pub machines, free apps and real money online games differ, and what is legal in Australia. Read more Pokies BGaming BGaming games turn up again and again in offshore casino free spin offers. Here is who makes them, what the provably fair label does and does not prove, and the max win cap that can bite before the multiplier does. Read more Pokies Big Bass Bonanza Big Bass Bonanza is a fishing pokie whose free spins hinge on one rule: wilds collect fish. Here is the official rulebook, the retrigger ladder worked through with numbers, the sequels and the Australian legal position. Read more Pokies Big Red Big Red is an Aristocrat venue pokie, and its clearest official paper trail is in ACT approval records. They show one game running at very different returns depending on the version, setting and denomination. Read more Pokies Big Time Gaming Big Time Gaming is a Sydney studio whose online pokies are played around the world but cannot legally be offered in its home country. Here is the company, what its catalogue is made of and how to read its RTP ranges. Read more Pokies Bonus buy A bonus buy lets you pay a fixed price, often 100 times your stake, to jump straight into the feature. It does not change the odds. It changes how fast you bet, and that is what makes it expensive. Read more Pokies Bonus features Wilds, scatters, free spins, multipliers and gambles make a pokie feel generous, but they are already paid for inside the RTP. Here is what each feature does, with maker examples and the maths of waiting. Read more Pokies Classic pokies Classic pokies have three reels, a handful of lines and symbols you can count on one hand. That makes them the one kind of pokie whose maths you can work out on paper. Here is a real example and a full model. Read more Pokies Buffalo Buffalo is Aristocrat's biggest pokie franchise, with a ways-to-win layout and dozens of spin-offs. Here is how the ways maths works, what each version changes, and why its online versions are not for Australians. Read more Pokies Dragon Link Dragon Link takes Aristocrat's Lightning Link formula and adds Asian themes and an orb trigger. Here is the official games list, what is and is not known about its RTP, and how to think about denominations. Read more Pokies Cluster pays Cluster pays pokies drop lines and pay for groups of touching symbols. Here is how to count a cluster on a grid, what the makers' pages say, and how often clusters and cascades land in our simulations. Read more Pokies Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus is Pragmatic Play's Zeus-themed pay-anywhere pokie, built on random multipliers. Here is how they behave in the base game and free spins, worked through with numbers, plus the sequels and the law here. Read more Pokies Hacksaw Gaming Hacksaw Gaming prints four RTP figures on most game pages, from about 96% down to about 88%. The site you play at picks one. Here is the company, its games and what each version costs you. Read more Pokies Highest RTP pokies Seventeen online pokies with the RTP their makers publish, from Mega Joker at 99% down. Plus the catch: many games ship in several RTP versions and the casino picks which one you get. Read more Pokies Hit frequency Hit frequency is the share of spins that win anything. Put it next to RTP and you get the average size of a win and the odds of a dry spell. Here is the maths with real maker data. Read more Pokies Hold and spin Coins lock in place, the respin counter resets to three, and everyone hopes for a full screen. Here is how the feature really works, with examples from the makers and a worked model of the odds. Read more Pokies How pokies work What really happens when you press spin: the random number generator, why every spin is independent, what RTP means and how much pokies pay out in each state. Read more Pokies How to win on pokies There is no way to beat a pokie over time. But you can choose what you play, how fast and for how long. Here is what works and the myths that cost money. Read more Pokies IGT IGT is one of the oldest names in poker machines, and in 2025 it changed hands again. Here is the company's history from its own filings, what it makes, and what Australian law requires its machines to pay back. Read more Pokies Light & Wonder Light & Wonder is a Las Vegas company whose shares now trade only on the ASX and whose games are partly built in Sydney. Here is what its reports say, the Dragon Train dispute and an RTP lesson from one online title. Read more Pokies Lightning Link Lightning Link is Aristocrat's linked jackpot family built around Hold & Spin. Here is what each title adds, how the free app works, and why real money Lightning Link online is not on offer legally in Australia. Read more Pokies Megaways Megaways was invented by Big Time Gaming, a studio in Surry Hills, Sydney. Here is how the number of ways changes every spin, how a win is counted, and what the maker's own RTPs look like. Read more Pokies More Chilli More Chilli is an Aristocrat venue classic that has just been rebuilt with Hold & Spin. It also shares half its name with an online game from a different maker. Here is how to tell them apart, and what each one returns. Read more Pokies NetEnt NetEnt is one of the few makers that prints RTP, hit frequency and maximum payout on every game page. Here is what those numbers say about Starburst, Gonzo's Quest and the rest, and who owns NetEnt now. Read more Pokies Lines and denominations Lines decide which symbol patterns pay, credits and denominations decide what each spin costs. Here is how they fit together, with real line counts from the makers and the sums for pub machines. Read more Pokies Reading a paytable A pokies paytable tells you what every win pays, in units that are easy to misread, and says nothing about how often each win comes. Here is how to read one in five minutes, with the maths of what is missing. Read more Pokies Play'n GO Play'n GO built Book of Dead and Reactoonz and now lists more than 400 titles. Its game pages publish no RTP at all, so the number you need lives inside the game. Here is the company, its mechanics and the check to do. Read more Pokies Pragmatic Play Pragmatic Play makes some of the most copied online pokies around, from Gates of Olympus to Big Bass Bonanza. Here is who runs it, the RTP it publishes for each hit, and the mechanics its games are built on. Read more Pokies Jackpot pokies A jackpot is paid for by a slice of every bet on the game. Here is how fixed, progressive and linked jackpots differ, what a growing jackpot is worth per spin, and why your lifetime odds are still small. Read more Pokies Queen of the Nile Queen of the Nile is a long-running Aristocrat poker machine name. Here is what its free games do, how its approved returns have been split between machine and jackpot, and how to read its information screen. Read more Pokies Pokies statistics How much Australians lose on pokies, state by state, how many machines there are and how the numbers have moved since 1999-00. Official data only, every figure dated and sourced. Read more Pokies Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza is Pragmatic Play's pay-anywhere candy pokie. Here are its official numbers, how its tumbles and multipliers really combine, what 96.48% means for your money, and where it stands under Australian law. Read more Pokies Pokies volatility Volatility decides how a pokie spreads its returns: small and often, or big and rare. Same RTP, very different sessions. Here is the maths. Read more Pokies Where's the Gold Where's the Gold is an Aristocrat name that now covers several different games. Here is what the current Australian version does, how its jackpot editions differ, and the odds of a big prize in plain numbers. Read more