Minimum pokie payouts, state by state

The sign outside the Thuringowa RSL Club in Townsville, Queensland, advertising its gaming machines. Photo: Ridiculopathy, CC0

What the minimum actually promises

The return to player figure is the share of all money bet on a machine that the game is designed to hand back as prizes. If the floor is 85%, the machine keeps an average of 15 cents from every dollar wagered over the long run. The key words are over the long run. No state promises that an individual punter gets 85% back from a night out, and none could.

Queensland's own training material for gaming staff spells this out. The Business Queensland responsible service of gambling refresher tells staff that gaming machines "must have a return of between 85% and 92% over their lifetime", that the return "is paid out over the lifetime of the machine", and that machines "usually function for 3 to 4 years and have approximately 1 million turnovers". We come back to that million below, because it explains why a session can look nothing like the label.

The legal floor in each state and territory

Minimum return figures for gaming machines, with the instrument or page each one comes from.

Where each figure comes from

The New South Wales floor sits in clause 11(2) of the Gaming Machines Regulation 2019, which requires prizes of "not less than 85% of the total money paid by players". In Victoria, the VGCCC sets 85% for hotels and clubs and reads a year as a calendar year.

That Victorian method is unusual. A Parliamentary Library bill brief from February 2025 explains that Victoria aggregates wagers and returns for all machines at a venue over a year under s 3.6.1 of the Gambling Regulation Act 2003, while other jurisdictions calculate the return over the game cycle, which can take years. The South Australian and Western Australian figures in our table come from the same paper's cross-jurisdiction comparison, so treat them as a parliamentary summary rather than the text of those states' own instruments.

Tasmania's position is the most recent. The Tasmanian Gaming Machine Standards, dated 1 December 2025 and made under s 112PA of the Gaming Control Act 1993, apply to equipment submitted for approval from that date. Clause 3.9.1 says the minimum "must not be less than 87%".

The ACT regulation is just as blunt in reg 76(1): "The minimum percentage payout of a gaming machine is 87%." The Northern Territory amending regulation that inserted reg 12A prescribes 85% "of the total amount of bets made by players each year", and lets licensees vary the return within a range the Director approves.

Linked jackpots can count towards the floor

Reg 76(2) of the ACT regulation adds a detail that matters on linked machines: the machine's own payout plus its percentage contribution to a linked jackpot counts towards the minimum. The regulation's example adds an 85% machine payout to a 3% jackpot contribution for a total of 88%. In other words, part of the advertised return sits in a jackpot pool that only a handful of players will ever collect. Tasmania deals with the same issue through display rules: the return must be shown to two decimal places, and the share coming from linked progressive contributions must appear as a separate percentage.

Lifetime return versus one session

Go back to Queensland's "approximately 1 million turnovers" over a machine's life. A punter who plays for one hour at one game every 3 seconds plays 1,200 games. The working is short:

1,200 ÷ 1,000,000 = 0.0012, or 0.12% of the machine's working life.

A slice that thin can land anywhere. Much of a pokie's return is concentrated in rare, large prizes, and the Parliamentary Library paper notes that under the national standard the probability of any advertised prize must be no worse than 1 in 7,000,000. At 1,200 games an hour, a prize with those odds would take, on average, 7,000,000 ÷ 1,200 ≈ 5,833 hours of play to land once. Strip that prize out of a short session and the return a punter actually sees is usually well below the label. Our explainer on how random number generators decide each result covers why no single spin is ever "due".

Worked calculation: the cost of an hour

The return figure turns into money with one formula. Expected money returned is RTP × bet per spin × spins per hour, so the expected loss is:

Expected loss per hour = (1 − RTP) × bet per spin × spins per hour

Speed is the input most people forget. The Parliamentary Library paper gives Victoria's current minimum game speed as 2.14 seconds, and the VGCCC compliance page now says a venue "must not allow a game to be played on a poker machine if the spin rate is less than 3 seconds". Here is the working for a $1 bet at an 85% floor and the 3-second rate:

1. Spins per hour: 3,600 seconds ÷ 3 = 1,200 spins.
2. Turnover: 1,200 × $1 = $1,200.
3. Expected return: 85% × $1,200 = $1,020.
4. Expected loss: $1,200 − $1,020 = $180, which is the same as 15% × $1,200.

At 2.14 seconds the machine runs 3,600 ÷ 2.14 ≈ 1,682 spins an hour, so the same bet costs 15% × $1,682 = $252.30.

Expected loss per hour at $1 a spin, by legal minimum and game speed.

Two things stand out. First, speed matters as much as the percentage. Moving from 2.14 to 3 seconds at an 85% floor cuts the hourly cost by $72.30 ($252.30 − $180.00), or about 29%. Lifting the floor from 85% to 87.5% at the faster speed saves $42.05 ($252.30 − $210.25). Second, the bet size multiplies everything. The same paper lists a $5 maximum bet in Victoria; at $5 a spin, 1,200 spins and 85%, turnover is $6,000 and the expected loss is $900 for the hour.

These are figures at the legal floor. A game set higher, such as the 92% top of Queensland's range, would cost 8% × $1,200 = $96 an hour at $1 and 3 seconds. The game's own help screen is the place to check its setting, and our guide to which casino games give the best odds compares pokies with table games on the same basis.

Reading the label without being misled

• It is an average, not a refund. The figure describes millions of games across a machine's life, or a whole venue's year in Victoria, not your session.
• Jackpot money is inside it. Where linked contributions count, part of the advertised return sits in a pool most players never touch.
• Speed and bet size drive the cost. The hourly formula above works for any machine once you know its return, your bet and how fast you press.
• The floors cover licensed venues. State standards apply to machines in Australian pubs, clubs and casinos; our overview of Australian gambling law explains how online pokies offered from offshore fall outside that system.
• A strategy cannot change the setting. Our earlier piece on pokies strategy deals with bankroll habits, not with beating the return.

If the hourly numbers above look more like your usual spend than you expected, that is worth acting on. Free, confidential counselling is available through Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858, and our responsible gambling page lists tools for setting limits before you sit down. Gambling is for adults 18 and over.