How to win at pokies: the honest answer from gday007

The short answer

There is no way to make a pokie more likely to pay. Every spin at gday007 is settled at random the moment you press the button, and nothing you do beforehand, from the hour you log in to the stake you pick, shifts the odds of that spin. What you can control is how much you spend, how long your money lasts and when you walk away.

RTP: the long-run return, in dollars

Return to player (RTP) is the share of all money staked on a game that it pays back across millions of spins. The studio sets it, and you can read it in the game's information panel. gday007 runs every game on its default, highest RTP setting. Here are four games from the lobby with their published figures.

That last column is the house edge. Big Red pays back roughly AU$97 for every AU$100 staked over a very long run and keeps about AU$3; Buffalo keeps a little over AU$5. Over one evening, though, a few hundred spins is far too small a sample for the average to show, so a short session can end well above or below it.

Use RTP to compare games, not to forecast a result. Choosing Big Red over Buffalo is a sensible way to pick the smaller edge. It is not a way to win.

Volatility: the shape of the ride

Volatility describes how a game spreads its return. A low-volatility pokie tends to hand back small amounts regularly, so your balance drifts rather than lurches. A high-volatility pokie saves more of its return for rare, larger wins, which means long gaps between payouts are part of the design.

JILI rates Super Ace as low–medium. Its card eliminations build a multiplier, and wins usually come in small steps. Aristocrat rates Buffalo as high: a big part of its value sits in the free games, where wilds add 2x or 3x multipliers, so dry patches in the base game are normal. For Big Red and Queen of the Nile, open the game's information panel to see the volatility before you play.

Volatility is the figure to match to your budget: the smaller the budget, the more a steady game helps it stretch.

Four myths worth dropping

"This machine is due to pay"

A pokie has no memory. Fifty losing spins in a row do not make spin fifty-one more likely to win, and a big win does not make the next spin less likely to pay.

"Late at night pays better"

A spin at 3 am is drawn exactly like a spin at 3 pm. The game settings at gday007 stay on their default whatever the hour.

"Bigger bets get better odds"

Changing your stake does not change the chance of any spin. A bigger bet simply puts more money through the game, so the amount you can expect to lose per spin grows with it.

"Autoplay is rigged one way or the other"

Autoplay just presses the button for you, and each spin is as random as one you start by hand. The real catch is pace: autoplay gets through a budget quickly, so keep the number of spins short and keep an eye on your balance.

A session plan that starts at AU$7

1. Set the budget first. Decide what you are happy to spend on entertainment today before you open the banking page. The gday007 minimum deposit is AU$7, so a small budget is fine.
2. Size the stake from the budget. Divide the budget by the number of spins you want. AU$20 at 20 cents a spin gives you 100 spins; at AU$1 a spin it gives you 20.
3. Pick two stop points. One for losses, which is the whole budget or less. One for a good run: if your balance climbs past AU$30, the minimum withdrawal, think about cashing some out by PayID, which arrives within 5 minutes.
4. Take breaks. Step away every half hour or so.
5. Learn the game in demo. gday007 offers demo play, so you can see a bonus round on practice credits before you pay for one.

If sticking to a plan starts to feel hard, the responsible gambling page lists the tools and support available.

Where bonuses fit

A bonus gives you extra credit to play with. It does not change a game's RTP or volatility. The current gday007 headline offers are an AU$38 welcome bonus and a 20% daily first-deposit bonus, and the free-credit offers sit alongside them on the promotions page. Read each offer there before you claim it, including which games it covers.

Where to go next

Want games picked with these figures in mind? See gday007's best pokies for 2026. The Aristocrat guide covers Big Red, Queen of the Nile and Buffalo, and Super Ace is in the JILI guide.

Pokies odds: common questions