How to play
Tens or Better is Jacks or Better with the bar lowered by one rank. A pair of 10s pays, so more of your hands win something. The full house and flush pay less to make up for it.
Play goes the usual way. Raise your stake with Bet one (1 to 5 credits, then back to 1), press Deal, or skip straight to a 5-credit deal with Bet max. Tap each card you want to keep until it says Held and press Draw. The rest are swapped for cards from the same 52-card deck, which is reshuffled before every hand.
There’s a Hint button for hard choices: after an optional ad, it marks the hold with the best long-run pay, worked out from every possible draw. Credits are virtual. You start with 1,000, and a free top-up of 1,000 is there if you run out.
Pay table
| Hand | Per credit |
|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 250 (4,000 at 5 credits) |
| Straight Flush | 50 |
| Four of a Kind | 25 |
| Full House | 6 |
| Flush | 5 |
| Straight | 4 |
| Three of a Kind | 3 |
| Two Pair | 2 |
| Pair of 10s or better | 1 |
Against the 9/6 Jacks or Better table, the full house loses three credits (9 to 6) and the flush one (6 to 5). In exchange, a pair of 10s pays 1.
The numbers
The exact return with perfect play at 5 credits is 99.14%, counted over every possible deal and hold. That’s 0.4 points below full-pay Jacks or Better.
What you get for it is a smoother ride. Under best play about 49.5% of hands pay something, compared with about 45.5% in Jacks or Better. Most of the difference is the extra pair: roughly one hand in four ends as a paying pair here. A royal shows up about once every 39,000 hands, slightly more often than in Jacks or Better, since 10s become worth keeping.
Strategy
The lower bar changes how you treat any 10. It’s now a “high card”: a 10 can make a paying pair, so it earns a place in holds where Jacks or Better would throw it away. The full house at 6 also makes some draws less attractive. Hands checked with the game’s exact hold values:
A pair of 10s with four to a flush (10♣ 10♦ 3♣ 6♣ 9♣). Keep the 10s. Here they’re a paying pair worth about 1.51 per credit, clearly more than the flush draw. On a Jacks or Better table, the same hand is played the other way: there the 10s are a low pair and the flush draw wins clearly.
A low pair with four to a flush (5♣ 5♦ 9♣ 10♣ J♣). Go for the flush. A pair of 5s still pays nothing, and the four clubs are worth about 1.09 against 0.79.
10-J-Q-K of mixed suits. Hold all four. It’s an open-ended straight draw made of four cards that each pay as a pair.
A lone 10 with junk (10♣ 4♦ 7♥ 8♠ 2♣). Keep the 10 rather than drawing five. It’s a small edge, but it’s one Jacks or Better players miss.
Two pair (10♣ 10♦ 5♥ 5♠ 9♣). Keep both pairs. Two pair still pays 2.
A-K of mixed suits. Hold both; they edge out either card alone.
Bet 5 credits whenever possible: the royal’s 800-per-credit pay at max bet is part of the 99.14%. For more practice with paying pairs and high-card holds, try Bonus Poker, which keeps Jacks as the bar but pays extra for Aces and low quads.
If you enjoy Tens or Better, try Texas Hold’em or Thirteen Card Poker next.
