Casino game weighting: the contribution table in full
A wagering contribution table is the grid in a bonus agreement stating what percentage of each wager is credited towards the turnover target, class of game by class of game. It is the clause that converts an advertised multiple into an actual amount of money you have to stake, and it is published separately from the multiple itself. This page sets out what the rows of such a grid normally contain, how each class of game tends to be rated, and the arithmetic that turns a multiple plus a rate into real stakes and a real number of rounds. Every percentage quoted below is an illustrative input chosen to show the method; the figures that bind you are the ones on the live terms page you accept.
Pokies Cashout · Payments and terms referencePublished Last reviewed Promotion figures supplied by site owner: 5 October 2026
Clause type
Bonus condition
Applies to
Each wager, before crediting
Published in
Promotion terms and bonus policy
Granularity
Title, provider, mechanic or class
Zero-rated rows
Credit nothing, at any stake
Operators
Offshore, not AU licensed
The three working parts of a contribution table
A wagering contribution table has three working parts, and only one of them is the percentages. First comes a header sentence defining what the figures modify. Then a left column naming each class of game. Then a right column carrying a rate for that class. Readers go straight to the right column, which is the half that cannot be used on its own, because a rate of twenty per cent means two different amounts of play depending on what the header sentence says it acts on.
The header has two possible forms. In the common one the percentage acts on each wager: the turnover target stays fixed and a bet on a class rated at twenty per cent credits a fifth of its face value. In the rare one the percentage restates the target, so the requirement is published as larger for that class while each bet credits in full. Play a single class from start to finish and the dollar cost is identical under either form; move between classes and the two diverge immediately.
Column count tells you how carefully the document was drafted. A two-column grid gives a class and a rate and nothing else. A better one adds a column marking classes excluded from the offer entirely, a column for per-promotion overrides, and occasionally a stake ceiling specific to that class. A grid with no exclusion column is not a grid showing nothing excluded; the exclusion list is simply published elsewhere, usually further down the same agreement.
Three things are almost never printed on the grid and all three change what it is worth: an effective date, a version number, and a sentence saying which grid prevails when the promotion page and the general bonus policy disagree. These documents are republished without the change being marked, so the rate you read last month is not evidence of the rate running today. Screenshot the rows covering the classes you intend to play, with the date visible, at the moment you accept.
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18+ only. Availability depends on your location and eligibility. Any promotion is subject to the operator's live terms, including wagering, eligible games, maximum bets, expiry and cashout limits where applicable. Deposit and withdrawal methods, processing times and limits are set by the operator and its payment providers and are not guaranteed here. Offshore operator; not licensed to offer online casino services in Australia. Gambling involves financial risk. Checked: 2026-10-05. 18+. Gambling involves financial risk.
The classes a grid lists, read from the top row down
Tables are ordered by rate, highest first, and the ordering is itself informative. The top row is almost always the operator's broadest pokies class at full contribution. Below it sit the carve-outs taken out of that class. Below those come video poker and the machine-dealt card and wheel games. At the bottom sit the live-dealer rows, the game shows, and whatever the agreement treats as low-risk. The bottom rows are where a requirement stops being expensive and becomes unclearable.
Count the rows before reading any of them. A four-row grid describes the lobby at a level of generality that cannot be matched to an individual title, which means most of the games you will open have no stated rate. A thirty-row grid broken down by provider and by named title is harder to read and far more useful, because a specific row beats an inferred one in any later dispute and removes the argument about which class your game belonged to.
Read the class names as contract terms rather than as lobby labels. A document may use pokies, video slots, instant win, crash games, arcade, specialty, scratch cards, bingo, keno, virtual sports and table games as distinct named classes, and the boundaries between them are the operator's to draw. Where two names could plausibly cover your game, the lower-rated reading is the one to plan around and the one to ask support to confirm in writing before you fund anything.
Then look for the catch-all line. Most grids end with a sentence covering everything not listed, either at a stated rate or at zero. That line does more work than any individual row, because it governs every title the grid failed to name. A grid with no catch-all leaves unlisted games with no stated status at all, and unstated is not the same as fully weighted. Do not fill the gap from a review site or from another operator's grid, since rates are set per operator and per promotion.
The classes a grid lists, read from the top row down
Why the pokies class splits into several separate rows
The highest row rarely covers every pokie in the lobby. The first carve-out is usually jackpot and progressive titles, which are frequently given their own row at a reduced rate or removed from the offer altogether. The reason is structural: a share of each stake on those games funds a pooled prize, so the operator would be crediting turnover it never kept. Whether your title is classified as a jackpot game is a question for the terms, not for the lobby tab you reached it through.
Bonus-buy titles are the second carve-out and now hold their own row on many grids. Some agreements rate the class lower across the board. Some permit the games but credit nothing for the purchase price while crediting ordinary spins at the class rate. Some prohibit buying a feature at all while a requirement is open, which converts a rate question into a voiding question. If you intend to use these titles, the treatment of the purchase price is the field to ask about explicitly.
Beyond those two, grids increasingly name mechanic-based classes: hold and win, Megaways, cluster pays, cash collect, and high-stakes or high-volatility ranges an operator has grouped for its own reasons. None of those names is standardised between operators, so a title merchandised under one of them in the lobby may sit in a different row in the terms. How any of these mechanics behaves once the reels move is not this site's subject — pokiesalmanac.com covers game mechanics, RTP and volatility.
Last, individual titles get named. A fully weighted pokies class can still carry a list of excepted titles printed below the grid rather than inside it, and those exceptions are where the most heavily played games in a lobby tend to turn up. Match at the most specific level the document uses: a named title beats a provider row, and a provider row beats a class. Where your game appears at no level, do not choose a class for it yourself and do not assume the top row.
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Blackjack, roulette, baccarat and video poker in the lower rows
The machine-dealt card and wheel games occupy the lower half of nearly every contribution grid, and they are rated low for a consistent reason: their designed house edge is small relative to a pokie's, so crediting their turnover in full would cost the operator more for each dollar of requirement cleared. Blackjack and video poker usually sit at or near the bottom. Roulette and baccarat sit low. Craps, sic bo and the dice products are commonly either very low or excluded.
Within those classes the subdivisions matter. A grid may rate European roulette differently from American, single-hand video poker differently from multi-hand, and one named blackjack variant differently from the class it nominally belongs to. Where a document splits by variant, the variant you select inside the game's own settings decides your rate, and switching variant mid-session changes the rate from that point with no notice anywhere in the client.
Zero rows deserve separate treatment because the arithmetic breaks rather than worsens. A class credited at zero has no required-play figure at all: no amount of staking on it clears any part of the requirement, and the only thing consumed is the expiry window. That is a different failure from a low rate, which is merely expensive. The games most often sitting at zero are the ones a careful player gravitates towards, which is the clause working exactly as drafted.
Then the clause that sits beside these rows in most agreements. Low-risk, equal-bet or covering-bet play — staking both sides of an even-money proposition, or covering most of a roulette layout — is typically prohibited outright and carries a voiding consequence rather than a reduced rate. Reading a low rate on a wheel game as licence to clear a requirement cheaply by hedging is the fastest route to a forfeited balance, and the discretion in those clauses is broad.
Conditions are published by the operator and change without notice. Read the live page before you act on anything here.
Live dealer tables and game shows at the bottom of the grid
Live-dealer rows are the lowest in the ordinary case and the most frequently set to zero. Streamed blackjack, roulette and baccarat are usually rated separately from their machine-dealt equivalents, and the live row is normally the lower of the two for what is nominally the same game. Nothing in the lobby distinguishes the two products in contribution terms, so the live tab and the table-games tab can carry very different rates for tiles that look interchangeable.
Game shows are a newer class and the one most likely to be unlisted. Products built around a spun wheel, a physical apparatus or a presenter-led bonus round may be grouped under live casino, under specialty, under their provider's own row, or nowhere at all. Where a game show is unlisted and the catch-all line gives a rate, the catch-all is your figure. Where there is no catch-all, there is no figure, and support stating one verbally is not the same as a grid stating it.
Side bets at a live table are a separate question from the table's main rate, and so is the behaviour of a wager placed on a table you are not seated at. Agreements rarely address either, which is why the measurement test in the final section matters more at this end of the grid than anywhere else in it. Treat an unaddressed component as unrated until the engine demonstrates otherwise under a controlled test.
Both Safe Casino and WinCrown carry live-dealer sections alongside their pokies lobbies, so a reader at either will meet these rows rather than only the top of the grid, and which classes appear at which rate is a question for each operator's live terms page rather than anything this page can state. Operator-level comparison is not this site's subject either: pokiesledger.com handles operator shortlists and bonus offers. What belongs here is the method for reading whichever grid you are shown.
Live dealer tables and game shows at the bottom of the grid
Converting a multiple into real stakes: the three-line sum
The conversion runs in three lines and needs three inputs, all of which come from your own agreement: the basis the multiple applies to, the multiple itself, and the rate for the class you will play. Line one, required credited turnover equals the basis multiplied by the multiple. Line two, required actual stakes equals that credited turnover divided by the rate expressed as a decimal. Line three, minimum rounds equals required stakes divided by the maximum bet permitted while the requirement is open.
The division in line two is where readers lose money, because a percentage presented as a contribution reads like a discount and behaves like a divisor. Full contribution means you stake exactly the credited turnover. Fifty per cent means twice it. Twenty per cent means five times. Ten per cent means ten times. Five per cent means twenty times. The error runs in the expensive direction every time, and the damage is concentrated in the bottom rows where halving a rate doubles the workload.
Work it with arbitrary inputs so the method is visible. Take a basis of one hundred units, a multiple of thirty and a class rated at full contribution: credited turnover is three thousand units and required stakes are three thousand units. Hold the basis and the multiple and move to a class rated at twenty per cent: credited turnover is still three thousand, but required stakes become fifteen thousand. The advertised condition did not change by one character between those two outcomes.
Then line three, which decides whether the offer is physically completable. Fifteen thousand units of stakes against a stake ceiling of five units is at least three thousand rounds, and across a seven-day window that is roughly four hundred and twenty-nine rounds a day. Compare that against how you actually use an account before depositing. Every figure in this section is an illustrative input; the basis, the multiple, the rate, the ceiling and the window all come from your own terms.
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Credited turnover when a session moves across classes
Across a session the quantity being tracked is credited turnover: for each round, the stake multiplied by that class's rate, summed. It is not the money you spent, and the two figures separate the moment you open a second game. Two accounts can stake identical amounts and sit at completely different points against the same target, which is why remaining work cannot be read off a balance, a deposit history or a session total.
Split a budget and the effect is larger than it looks. Put five-sixths of a fixed amount through a fully weighted class and the remaining sixth through a class rated at twenty per cent, and credited progress comes to about seven-eighths of everything staked. Reverse the split so the bulk runs through the twenty per cent class and the identical budget credits one third of itself. Same money, same lobby, under half the progress — the distribution matters as much as the rates.
Nothing in the client announces the change. Credit already banked is not withdrawn when you switch to a lower-rated class; what changes is the rate at which the progress figure advances from that point. A progress bar that slows sharply after a game change is the grid being applied rather than a fault, and support will correctly tell you so. Note the progress figure before and after each game change if you intend to query anything later.
The planning consequence is to decide the clearing class before the window starts rather than during it. Convert the requirement twice: once at the best rate in the grid, and once at the rate for the class you will genuinely spend the window on. The first figure is what the offer looks like; the second is what you have agreed to. Decide on the gap between them, then divide the second by the days remaining to get the pace the condition actually demands.
Which part of a stake gets credited: side bets, antes and feature buys
A round is often not a single wager, and the grid rates classes rather than components. Where a round carries a base stake plus something extra — a side bet, an ante, an insurance stake, a double-up or a gamble feature — the question is whether the whole amount staked is credited at the class rate or only the base wager. Agreements frequently do not say, and where they are silent the engine's measured behaviour is the only answer available to you.
Side bets are the common case and the one most likely to be handled separately. A live table rated low for its main bet may credit its side bets at zero, exclude them, or credit them at the main rate. The amounts are small per round and large across a window, and a side bet credited at zero alongside a main bet credited at a low rate makes the effective rate for your actual betting pattern lower than any single figure printed in the document.
Feature purchases are the expensive case. A bought feature can be credited at the class rate, credited at zero, excluded outright, or treated as one large wager that breaches the maximum-bet rule in a single round — and that last outcome is a voiding question rather than a progress question. The mechanics of that ceiling are at /bonus-terms/max-bet-rule/. Ask about the purchase price specifically and keep the answer in writing before buying anything.
Promotional spin rounds are a third component question. Spins awarded as part of an offer may credit nothing towards turnover, since the stake was not funded from your balance, while the winnings those spins produce may themselves carry the requirement. That is the combination that catches people, because the leg that generates the obligation is the leg that generated no progress. The arithmetic is set out at /bonus-terms/free-spin-winnings-wagering/.
Matching a lobby tile to the right row in the terms
The lobby is a merchandising surface and the grid is a contractual one, and they are maintained by different parts of the business. A tile reached through a pokies tab can be classified in the terms as a jackpot game, a progressive, a hold-and-win product, an instant-win game, a bonus-buy title, or a release from a provider carrying its own row. The tab you used to find the game is not evidence of which row governs it.
Match in this order: the named title, then the provider, then the mechanic class, then the broad category, then the catch-all line. Stop at the first level where your game appears and ignore every level below it. Where the levels conflict — a title named at one rate inside a class rated at another — the specific naming governs in nearly every agreement, but confirm that against the precedence sentence rather than assuming it holds in yours.
Two grids usually exist rather than one. A site-wide bonus policy carries a default table covering the whole lobby, and an individual promotion may override it for that offer alone. The promotion-specific table normally governs, but only because a precedence clause says so, so locate that sentence before trusting either. If nothing in either document resolves a conflict about your class, the rate you are consenting to is genuinely undetermined at the moment you accept.
The lobby also will not stop you. The contribution grid lives in the promotions engine and in the agreement, while the game launcher gates openings on neither. A zero-rated game loads, accepts the stake, pays its wins and credits nothing towards the requirement. The only real-time signal available is a progress figure that does not move, which is why that figure is worth noting before the first round rather than after the hundredth.
Measuring the real rate, and when the grid kills the offer
The document is the agreement; the engine is what credits you. Those can differ, and the only disagreement you can realistically carry is one you can evidence. Find the wagering progress figure in the account or bonus area and note it exactly. Place a modest fixed number of rounds at one constant stake, comfortably below any ceiling in the terms. Note the figure again. The implied rate is credit gained divided by total staked, and it either matches the row or it does not.
Keep the stake constant, because a stake change mid-test makes the division meaningless, and use enough rounds that rounding cannot explain the answer. Some displays batch their updates, so wait and refresh before concluding that nothing moved. Three outcomes follow. A figure matching the row, which lets you proceed. No movement at all, which means stop before the next bet and ask support. Or a figure materially below the published rate, which means asking which clause produces it and keeping the reply in writing.
Decline the offer outright in four situations. The contribution grid is not published anywhere readable before you accept. The promotion terms and the general policy give different rates with no precedence sentence between them. Your intended class is named at no level and support will not state a rate in writing. Or every class you actually use sits in the bottom rows, in which case the offer is not addressed to you and no amount of arithmetic improves it.
A missing grid is not a neutral fact to be sorted out later by support. It means the largest multiplier in the agreement is unspecified at the point of consent, and consent to an unspecified term is what makes a later dispute unwinnable. Every operator in this market is offshore, so no Australian regulator audits a crediting engine on your behalf; escalation runs through the operator's own complaints procedure and then the licensor named in its footer, and your own arithmetic is what gives that complaint a shape. A declined bonus costs nothing.
The three working parts of a contribution table — at a glance
Questions people actually ask
What is a casino game weighting contribution table?
It is the grid in a bonus agreement stating what percentage of each wager is credited towards a wagering requirement, listed by class of game. The rate is applied before your wager reaches the progress counter, so a class rated at twenty per cent credits a fifth of each bet. The rates come from the promotion terms and the bonus policy on the operator's own site, not from any general article.
How do I convert a wagering multiple into actual stakes?
Three lines. Required credited turnover equals the basis the multiple applies to, multiplied by the multiple. Required actual stakes equals that turnover divided by the contribution rate as a decimal. Minimum rounds equals required stakes divided by the maximum bet permitted while the requirement is open. All four inputs are read from your own agreement; the method is the part this page supplies.
Why is a twenty per cent contribution rate five times the work?
Because the rate is a divisor, not a discount. If three thousand units of credited turnover are required and each wager credits a fifth of itself, you must stake fifteen thousand units to credit three thousand. The percentage reads like a reduction in the requirement and functions as a multiplier on the money you have to put through, which is why the bottom rows of a grid are where offers become unclearable.
Do pokies always sit in the top row at full contribution?
No. The broad pokies class is usually the top row, but jackpot and progressive titles, bonus-buy titles and various mechanic-based classes are routinely carved out of it at lower rates or excluded, and individual titles are often named as exceptions below the grid. Check whether your title is named at any level before assuming the top row applies to it.
What happens if my game is not listed in the grid at all?
Look for the catch-all line, which covers everything not listed at either a stated rate or zero. If there is no catch-all, your game has no stated status, and unstated is not the same as fully weighted. Ask support for the rate in writing, and treat refusal to give one as a reason to decline the offer rather than as a detail to resolve afterwards.
Do side bets and feature purchases count towards wagering?
Often differently from the base wager, and agreements frequently do not say. A side bet may credit at zero while the main bet credits at the class rate, and a bought feature may be credited at the class rate, at zero, excluded, or treated as one large wager that breaches the maximum bet rule in a single round. Ask about each component separately and keep the answer in writing.
Which grid applies if the promotion page and the bonus policy disagree?
Whichever the agreement says prevails. Look for a precedence sentence stating that promotional terms override the general terms in the event of conflict. Without one, two contradicting grids leave the condition undetermined and the operator's reading is the one applied, which is a reason to decline rather than to proceed and argue later.
Can I check what the engine is really crediting me?
Yes, with a controlled test. Note the progress figure, place a fixed number of rounds at one constant stake below any ceiling, then note it again and divide credit gained by total staked. Keep timestamps, the stake, the round count and screenshots of both readings. No Australian regulator audits an offshore crediting engine, so that record is what gives a complaint its shape.
