Double Pay Spin Poker is an example of a video poker variation that just grafts some new gameplay elements on top of an existing poker game. We have a detailed treatment of Double Pay Poker on its own page here, but in a nutshell, the gist of Double Pay Poker is that you make 2 bets per hand and get 2 payoffs—a payoff for the hand you’re dealt and another for the hand you wind up with after discarding.

We also have a detailed treatment of Spin Poker on our site. In another nutshell, the idea behind Spin Poker is that you get 3 rows of cards. Your hand is the middle row, and just like regular video poker, you get to discard between 0 and 5 cards. Whichever cards you keep are duplicated on the other 2 rows. Then you’re dealt replacement cards from a 47 card deck.

If Spin Poker sounds a little bit like multi-line video poker, well, that’s because it IS similar to that game. But there’s a big difference.

In multi-line poker, all the hands are played more or less independently during the drawing phase of the game. The replacement cards are each dealt from a separate deck.

But in Spin Poker, one deck is used to fill in all the spots. It’s a subtle difference, but it makes a difference, especially mathematically. For example, it makes it impossible to be dealt 4 of a kind on all 3 rows. Being dealt in a pattern from left to right and top to bottom simulates a sort of spinning action, hence the name.