How OFC royalties and scoring work
OFC pays three things: row wins, a scoop bonus, and royalties. Rooms disagree on the royalty chart. This page documents the schedule OFC Lab’s engine uses.
Progressive rooms, Asian live games, and older American OFC sometimes pay different top-pair or middle-trips values. Do not mix charts. When you study in OFC Lab you are studying this table. Confirm the house chart before you take a line to a cash table.
Taiwanese poker does not use these royalties. It scores 1 / 2 / 3 points per board plus an 8-point sweep bonus. See Taiwanese vs Pineapple.
The three layers of a score
For each opponent, OFC Lab adds:
- Row points — plus or minus one per row, then a ±3 scoop bonus if someone swept all three.
- Royalty net — your royalties minus theirs. Both boards can get paid.
- Fantasyland net — the continuation value of qualifying (or denying qualification), using the format’s card-count multipliers.
If the table uses an effective stack, the combined net is clipped so you cannot win or lose more than the shorter stack. That is a table setting, not a change to the royalty chart.
Row points and the scoop
Legal board versus legal board:
- Each row: +1 / 0 / −1 for win / tie / loss.
- Win all three: additional +3 (the scoop). Lose all three: −3.
A scoop with no royalties and no Fantasyland is a 6-point hand. A tie on any row kills the scoop bonus. In 2-7 Pineapple the middle comparison is reversed: the better 2-7 low (closer to 7-5-4-3-2) wins the middle.
What a foul costs
A fouled board collects zero royalties and does not win rows. OFC Lab applies:
- −6 row points (the foul penalty — the same magnitude as giving up a scoop).
- Minus the opponent’s royalties.
- Minus the opponent’s Fantasyland continuation if they qualified.
Both players foul: the hand is zeroed.
High-middle formats foul when bottom is worse than middle, or middle is worse than top. 2-7 additionally fouls when the middle is not a qualifying low (unpaired ten-high or better). Joker formats can also produce a forced foul if no legal wild assignment exists.
Top royalties
Top is a three-card hand. Pairs below six do not pay. Trips always pay.
| Top hand | Royalty |
|---|---|
| Pair of sixes | +1 |
| Pair of sevens | +2 |
| Pair of eights | +3 |
| Pair of nines | +4 |
| Pair of tens | +5 |
| Pair of jacks | +6 |
| Pair of queens | +7 |
| Pair of kings | +8 |
| Pair of aces | +9 |
| Trip deuces | +10 |
| Each higher trips rank | +1 (up to trip aces +22) |
There are no straight or flush royalties on top — those hands do not exist in three-card OFC ranking.
Bottom royalties (high five-card hand)
The bottom uses this American Pineapple schedule:
| Bottom hand | Royalty |
|---|---|
| Straight | +2 |
| Flush | +4 |
| Full house | +6 |
| Four of a kind | +10 |
| Straight flush | +15 |
| Royal flush | +25 |
Two pair, trips, and one pair on the bottom score row strength only. They do not pay a royalty on this chart.
Middle royalties (high middle)
Used by Pineapple, Progressive, Ultimate Progressive, and Ultimate + Progressive + Jokers. The middle pays more than the bottom for the same category because a strong middle is harder to keep legal.
| Middle hand | Royalty |
|---|---|
| Three of a kind | +2 |
| Straight | +4 |
| Flush | +8 |
| Full house | +12 |
| Four of a kind | +20 |
| Straight flush | +30 |
| Royal flush | +50 |
Two pair in the middle is a strong row and a common foul risk. It is not a royalty on this table.
Middle royalties (2-7 Pineapple)
When the middle is a deuce-to-seven low, OFC Lab does not pay the high-hand chart. A qualifying low (unpaired, ten-high or better) can add:
| 2-7 middle | Royalty |
|---|---|
| 9-high | +1 |
| 8-high | +2 |
| 7-high (including the 7-5-4-3-2 wheel) | +4 |
Any pair or better in a 2-7 middle fails to qualify and fouls the board. The wheel also contributes to Fantasyland qualification in that format; see the variants article.
Worked example
Heads-up, both boards legal, regular Pineapple, ignore Fantasyland for a moment.
- Hero top QQ (+7), middle eights-up (no royalty), bottom ace-high flush (+4). Hero royalties = 11.
- Villain top 77 (+2), middle pair of aces, bottom kings-up. Villain royalties = 2.
- Hero wins top, loses middle, wins bottom. Row points = +1 −1 +1 = +1. No scoop.
- Royalty net = 11 − 2 = +9.
- Hand total = +10 before Fantasyland. Hero also qualified for a 14-card Fantasyland; that continuation is added using the format’s Fantasyland value.
If hero had fouled the same board, the score would flip to −6 − 2 plus whatever Fantasyland value villain had — the QQ royalty vanishes.
What the Trainer optimizes
Expected value in OFC Lab is the average of this full net over rollouts: rows, royalties, and Fantasyland, against an opponent policy, optionally clipped to a stack. A line that wins more rows can still be worse than one that concedes a row to lock a top pair and a safe middle.
When you browse an opening Library, each candidate shows EV, a 95% interval, foul rate, Fantasyland rate, and a breakdown into row points, royalty net, and Fantasyland net. Practice mode asks you to reproduce the set; it does not spend a solve.
After the 14-day / 25-solve trial, Pro ($49/month or $490/year) keeps Pineapple, Progressive, Ultimate Progressive, Fantasyland analysis, and the multiway Trainer. High Roller ($99/month or $990/year) adds 2-7, jokers, Taiwanese, and library generation. Full comparison.