Kings of Chicago (NetEnt) RTP review: 97.80%
When NetEnt shuffled the deck
The premise is a 1920s speakeasy card game: five reels showing playing cards, five paylines, and wins scored as poker hands — the stronger the hand along a line, the bigger the pay, with a Joker wild substituting and doubling wins it completes. Scattered "deal" cards trigger free spins ("free deals"). It's a genuine hybrid rather than a re-skin; anyone who has played Jacks or Better will read the paytable instantly, while slot players get an unfamiliar and oddly compelling win grammar. The 97.80% figure — fixed, single-build, identical at every operator — put it in the studio's elite tier alongside Devil's Delight (97.60%) and behind only Blood Suckers (98%) among unconditional returns.
High volatility hiding in a card deck
Don't let the parlour theme fool you: this is a 4/5 volatility game with a 13,000x ceiling — enormous for 2011 NetEnt. The distribution follows poker's own logic. Pairs and trips land constantly and pay little; the money hands (straight flush, royal flush, especially during doubled free-deal wins) are proper rarities. Sessions therefore feel like grinding a card table: long stretches of small-hand churn punctuated by the occasional monster. Stakes start at a penny, which suits the grind.
The catch: it's a museum exhibit now
NetEnt withdrew support in 2019, so Kings of Chicago survives only where operators keep legacy catalogues alive. That scarcity is the main argument against building any routine around it — and the main reason to try it when you spot it, because the combination of near-98% fixed return and genuinely novel mechanics has no modern replacement. Among current high-RTP survivors, our rankings list the alternatives; none of them deal cards.
Strengths
- Fixed 97.80% — top-five NetEnt territory, no conditions
- Poker-hand scoring is a genuine mechanical original
- 13,000x ceiling, huge for its generation
- Joker-doubled free-deal wins carry real punch
Weaknesses
- Unsupported since 2019 — increasingly rare in lobbies
- High variance behind an innocuous exterior
- Five paylines feels sparse today
Verdict: the best slot idea NetEnt never revisited
Skip if: you want guaranteed availability or low-variance comfort — this offers neither.
Kings of Chicago is what happens when a studio takes a risk and prices it generously: a hybrid that still feels fresh, backed by a return modern releases rarely approach. The rating reflects maths and originality; the availability caveat is the tax on loving discontinued things. Find it, learn the hand rankings, and it repays the effort.