Double Bonus Poker Pay Tables

Double Double Bonus video poker is the most popular video poker game in casinos, but it’s not generally considered a possibility for advantage play. In other words, if you’re looking to make a profit at the casino, then this probably isn’t the game for you. That being said, Double Double Bonus is a lot of fun, and strategy makes as big a difference in this game as it does in Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild.

The reason this game is so popular is because of the large payout for the “four aces with a kicker” hand, which happens almost 3 times as often as a royal flush in Jacks or Better. The payout for this hand is half of that for the royal flush, though—2000 coins instead of 4000 coins.

If you understand the basics of Jacks or Better, you’ll have little trouble figuring out how to play the game. But some of the strategies are different, and this page covers those strategy differences below.

Double Double Bonus Payout Charts

As you can see from the pay table above, the royal flush is the highest payout in Double Bonus. It will pay at odds of 800 to 1, with 4000 coins the maximum payout. To win 4000 coins, you will first have to play with five coins. This is why it is always important to play with the maximum coin bet.

The first element of every decent video poker strategy has nothing to do with how to play individual hands. Game selection is crucial. Choosing the games with the best payout tables is the most important skill you can develop as a player.

Like Jacks or Better, the payouts at Double Double Bonus change for the full house and flush hands, and the annotation for that is the same as in Jacks or Better. For example, when we talk about full pay, or 9/6 Jacks or Better, we’re talking about a game that pays out 9 coins for a full house and 6 coins for a flush.

The best Double Double Bonus games offer a theoretically positive expectation if you play perfectly. These are the 10/7 and 10/6 versions of the game, which offer a payback percentage of 100.17% and 100.06% respectively. Those pay tables are rare indeed, though, but they’re still worth looking for.

The more common payout structures are 9/6 and 9/5 Double Double Bonus, which offer payout percentages of 98.98% and 97.87% respectively. These numbers aren’t as good as a full pay Jacks or Better game, but they both still beat the payout percentage for 8/5 Jacks or Better.

Two More “Meta-Strategy” Tips

Play

A few other considerations are more important than how to play specific hands. I call these “meta-strategies”. These include playing for maximum coins. This should be a no-brainer, but the top jackpot is only available to players who have wagered all 5 coins. If you wager fewer coins than that, you’re giving back a huge percentage to the casino—1.33%, in fact.

Being a member of the slots club is another no-brainer. Slot club members get back between 0.2% and 0.4% of their wagers in the form of rebates from the casinos. This doesn’t sound that significant, but if you’re playing max coins on a quarter machine, you’re wagering $1.25 per hand. The average video poker player is in action for 600 hands per hour, which is $750. That’s an average of around $2/hour in benefits for being a member of the slots club.

Strategy Tips for Double Double Bonus Video Poker

Correct strategy for Double Double Bonus video poker is a little more complicated than correct strategy for Jacks or Better, but it’s not at all beyond the average person’s ability to comprehend. If you use good game selection and follow these tips, you’ll be at close to break-even with the casino, which means you can have a great time at the casino while enjoying a theoretical mathematical loss of close to nothing.

The first thing to know is that it’s always correct to hold onto a hand with four aces, deuces, threes, or fours with a kicker. This is in line with some of the other general strategy advice I offered in another page on our site, which is to let the machine deal you a winning hand.

If you have a four of a kind of the above description without a kicker, then discard the fifth card and draw, hoping to get a kicker. It’s still a winning hand, but it will win even more when you occasionally hit your kicker.

Never hold a kicker with any three of a kind, though.

Again, keeping in mind that you want to let the machine deal you a winner, you’ll almost always hold any winning combination. But there are some exceptions:

Bonus Poker Pay Tables

  • If you have a full house with three aces, keep the three aces and discard the other two cards.
  • If you have a flush or a straight, you’ll draw to a 4 card royal flush.
  • If you have two pair, and one of those pairs is AA, then you’ll draw to the aces.
  • If you have a high pair, you’ll break it if you have 4 cards to a royal flush or to a straight flush.

A four card straight flush is better than a three card royal flush. Both of these hands are better than ANY other hand that isn’t already a winner.

  • A four card flush is better than a low pair or a four card straight.
  • A low pair is better than a four card straight.
  • A three card straight flush is a playable hand, but some hands are better—including a four card flush, a low pair, or a four card straight.

Play Double Double Bonus Poker

Double double bonus poker trainer

Double Bonus Poker Pay Table

Differences from Jacks or Better Strategy

You should notice that a number of strategy differences exist between Double Double Bonus and Jacks or Better. For example, in Jacks or Better, you would never break a full house, but in Double Double Bonus, you would always break that full house in order to draw to three aces. In Jacks or Better, you’d never break two pair, either, but in Double Double Bonus, you’ll sometimes break two pair when you have AA. Perceptive readers will notice that most of the strategy changes revolve around the high payout for the four aces jackpot.

Double Bonus Video Poker

What exactly is Double Bonus Video Poker and how it compares to Bonus and Double Double Bonus Poker?

In order to explain Double Bonus Video Poker, we will need to start with defining Bonus Poker, which is a Jack or Better Video Poker variant that pays bonus amounts for Four of a Kind hand. The payout rate is determined according to the rank of the cards and not all combinations will have the same payout value. For example, Four of a Kind with all Aces will have a payout value of 80 to 1, 2s, 3s and 4s will pay 40 to 1, and all other Four of a Kind hands pay 25 to 1.

Double Bonus Video Poker Pay Tables

In Double Bonus, the payouts for Four of a Kind are increased by 2. On the other hand, to make up for the doubled payouts on one side, Double Bonus variant is decreasing payouts on Two Pair hand, reducing 2 to 1 payout rate to even money. This has also affected the volatility of the Double Bonus variant and resulted in a game that can easily go both ways – generating a massive winning or draining your budget in a relatively short time period.

Double Double Bonus Video Poker goes an extra mile and doubles the already doubled Four of a Kind Payout rates while keeping the even payouts for the Two Pair hands.


Double Bonus Poker: pro tips and tricks

Double Double Bonus Poker Pay Table

Some of the strategic rules that one has adopted over time, especially by playing Jacks or Better, might not be applicable when playing Double Bonus Poker.

For instance, let’s say that the player holds a Full House, which in some other Video Poker variants is not the kind of hand you would want to split. In Double Bonus however, keeping the Aces and getting rid of the extra pair is what most of the experienced Video Poker players would do, due to the high payout rate that one might win if the fourth Ace is drawn.

Another common mistake that a lot of beginners make in Double Bonus is keeping a low pair on a Straight and a Low Pair hand. For the sake of illustration, let us assume that the player has a hand consisting out of a pair of 8s, a Jack, a 9 and a 10. In this case, the player should hold onto four consecutive cards – 8, 9, 10 and Jack – which can result in a Straight Flush and pay 50 to 1 as oppose to the 25 to 1 payout odd for a lower pair.

Where to play Double Bonus Video Poker?

Boyd, Plaza and The D are only some of the venues offering Double Bonus Video Poker machines, which, thanks to their high volatility, are much easier to find than Jacks or Better.

The interesting thing about this game is that it was not very popular for ages in Vegas, but you now see it more and more. This is probably because you now get a choice of game, so they can offer this one as an extra choice, without taking away a classic Deuces Wild or regular Jacks or Better game from the casino floor

Triple Double Bonus Poker Machines

Double Bonus Poker Casinos

Super Double Double Bonus Poker

When you play for real money in a casino, you probably want to study the tactics in a bit of details, because it requires a specific strategy that is different from the regular games of video poker, like Jacks or Better.

For this reason, a lot of players would stick to games they know and love (and know how to play optimally) like Jacks or Better or Deuces Wild.

Double Bonus Poker Volatility

Double Bonus Poker Pay Tables

Because you get a much higher payout for 4-of-a-kind, the wins are reduced for lower hands. This makes the game far more volatile and you could go for long periods without winning much money, then suddenly hit a couple of 4 of a kind hands and find yourself up big time.

So, the Double bonus game is generally better for pros than for amateurs.