Bola Tangkas on 3Win8: How the Seven-Card Poker Machine Pays

Bola Tangkas grew out of the arcade poker machines that were common in Indonesia, and it still has a following in Malaysia. The 3Win8 version keeps the classic look: a navy card table, seven cards laid out in two staggered rows, and a paytable that fills the whole top third of the screen.

The basic rules

You are dealt seven cards. The machine picks out the best five-card poker hand among them and pays it from the table. There is no holding and discarding like in normal video poker.

The paytable includes Five of a Kind, which cannot happen with a normal 52-card deck. That tells you a wild card is in the deck; traditional Bola Tangkas uses a joker, and this version appears to do the same.

The paytable at a 0.10 bet

A pair of Aces is the lowest paying hand, and it only returns the stake. Anything smaller loses.

Dealing in stages

In the second screenshot four of the seven cards are face up (2♥, 5♠, A♦, 10♥), three are still face down, and both Draw and Deal are lit. At the same moment every paytable figure has tripled: Royal Flush reads 150.00, Full House 2.10 and Ace Pair 0.30. That fits the traditional Bola Tangkas format, where you can add to your bet after seeing the first cards and before the rest are turned. Check the ? help page in your build for the exact rule.

The extra columns

On the left of the paytable is a second column of prizes (100.00, 40.00, 20.00 and 10.00) with a small bet amount beside each, lined up against the four top hands. This looks like the side prize system Bola Tangkas machines use for the big hands. A box at the bottom left reads FUL = A in one screenshot and FUL = 7 in the other, so it changes from round to round. The help pages were not captured, so I am not going to guess what these pay.

How to play it without overdoing it

The main paytable is thin at the bottom: Two Pair and Ace Pair only return your stake. Most of the value is in Four of a Kind and above, which are rare. If the game lets you raise mid-hand, raise only when the visible cards already give you something (a made pair of Aces, four to a flush). Raising on nothing is how a small balance disappears.

For a poker game with a hold-and-draw round in the same app, see Big Shark. More games are in the 3Win8 guide, and you can get a 3Win8 game ID if you want to try it.