Jacks or Better and Its Bonus Poker Cousins

Compare Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, and Double Bonus variants. Discover full-pay tables, exact returns, and swings for Canadians.

Walk through almost any online lobby and most of the video poker games you see are cousins of Jacks or Better. They shuffle the same deck and rank the same hands, and what changes is how the pay table shifts money between rows. This guide treats Jacks or Better as the yardstick and then follows the family through its bonus branch (Bonus Poker, Bonus Poker Deluxe and Aces and Faces), the flat-pay All American variant and the three Double Bonus games, naming the table worth looking for in each, its exact return and the way each change reshapes the swings.

Jacks or Better as the Yardstick

Every other game in this guide is judged against Jacks or Better 9/6. Perfect play returns 99.54%, which leaves a house edge of 0.46%, and 45.5% of hands pay something. The swing is 4.4 bets per hand, and a pair of jacks is the lowest paying hand. A variation is only interesting if it changes how much comes back, how often a hand pays or how bumpy the ride is.

How a Bonus Game Moves the Money

Every bonus game increases the prize for four of a kind. A pay table has to balance, so the money for those prizes is taken from rows that pay out far more often. The table lists, for each full-pay table, what rises and what falls compared with Jacks or Better 9/6.

All of these tables keep the royal flush at 800 per coin on a five-coin bet and the pair of jacks at 1. The money for the bonus comes out of rows that land much more often than any four of a kind, which are the full house, the flush and two pair. That is how a game can grow rougher without becoming more generous.

Bonus Poker and Bonus Poker Deluxe in Detail

Bonus Poker keeps the base game’s 25 for most fours of a kind and pays more only at the extremes: 80 for four aces and 40 for four 2s, 3s or 4s. To fund that, the full house shrinks from 9 to 8 and the flush from 6 to 5. The result is a return of 99.17% at the full-pay 8/5 table, about 0.4 percentage points under Jacks or Better 9/6, with the swing moving from 4.4 to 4.6 bets per hand.

Bonus Poker Deluxe takes a simpler route. Every four of a kind pays 80, and two pair falls from 2 to 1, which merely returns the bet. At 9/6 that table returns 99.64%, a touch above Jacks or Better, and the swing climbs to 5.7. Four of a kind barely changes in frequency, arriving roughly once in 424 hands, but each one is now worth 80 instead of 25. As a result, hands that pay 25 or more provide 21% of the return, compared with 8% in Jacks or Better.

Aces and Faces, All American, and a Hold That Flips

Aces and Faces rewards the picture cards. Four aces earn the top bonus of 80, four jacks, queens or kings earn half of it and every other rank stays at the base game’s 25. At the full-pay 8/5 table it returns 99.26%, a little above Bonus Poker 8/5, with a swing of 4.6.

All American Poker flattens the middle of the table. The full house, flush and straight all pay 8, the straight flush jumps to 200 and four of a kind pays 35. Its return at 35/8 is 99.60%, but just 41.8% of hands pay anything, the thinnest share of any game covered here. Flat 8s change which draws are worth chasing. Take 10♣ 9♥ 8♣ 7♠ 7♦: the choice is between the pair of sevens and the four cards in a row, which need a 6 or a jack to complete a straight. What the straight pays decides which hold is better.

The same five cards, three games and two different best holds: that is why a chart learned on one pay table cannot be trusted on another.

Double Bonus Poker: The 10/7 Table

Double Bonus is the loud cousin of Bonus Poker. Four aces pay 160, four 2s, 3s or 4s pay 80 and the remaining ranks pay 50, and part of the bill is settled by two pair dropping to 1. The straight, by contrast, rises to 5. The best-known table is 10/7, meaning a full house at 10 and a flush at 7, and its return is 100.17%.

The prizes are financed elsewhere. Only 43.3% of hands pay anything, against 45.5% in Jacks or Better, and the swing rises to 5.3. Hands that pay 25 or more account for 18% of the return, so a long drought without a four of a kind drains the balance faster than it would in the base game.

A return over 100% still does not make an hour profitable. It describes a long-run average over countless perfectly played hands. Play 720 hands at C$1 each on Double Bonus 10/7 and the chance of ending ahead is only 41%, while the median hour loses C$24. Our guide to budgeting and volatility shows how those odds are worked out.

Kickers: Double Double Bonus and Triple Double Bonus

In these two games the prize for four of a kind depends on the kicker, the fifth card in the hand, and the richest prizes go to aces and to the low ranks when the right card sits beside them. Here is the ladder, from the top:

• Four aces and a low fifth card (2, 3 or 4): 400 in Double Double Bonus and 800 in Triple Double Bonus.
• Four aces and any other fifth card: 160 in both games.
• Four 2s, 3s or 4s and a fifth card that is an ace or another of the low ranks: 160 in Double Double Bonus and 400 in Triple Double Bonus.
• Four 2s, 3s or 4s and any other fifth card, from 5 to king: 80 in both games.
• Four 5s through kings: 50 in both games.

Double Double Bonus runs at a swing of 6.5 bets per hand at its full-pay 10/6 table, and its top prize is a long shot: four aces with a low kicker arrive about once every 16,236 hands.

The kicker tempts players to hold a fifth card they should throw away. Dealt A♠ A♥ A♦ 9♠ 2♣ in Double Double Bonus 9/6, the instinct is to keep the 2 and chase the 400 prize. The exact count says otherwise: the three aces alone are worth 12.49 per coin bet, and the three aces with the 2 are worth 11.83. Drawing two cards doubles the chance of catching the fourth ace, and that outweighs the better kicker.

Triple Double Bonus pushes the kicker idea to its limit. To fund top prizes of 800 and 400, three of a kind is cut to 2. Its swing is 9.9 bets per hand, more than twice the 4.4 of Jacks or Better, and hands that pay 25 or more account for 28% of the return.

What Shorter Tables Cost in the Double Bonus Games

Casinos often run these three games with trimmed pay tables, and the trims are expensive. The table sets each game’s full-pay return beside the reduced versions you may find.

Each step down in the full house or flush row removes a fraction of a point or more. In Triple Double Bonus the fall from 9/7 to 8/5 is 3.61 percentage points, which is why the label on the screen matters more than the name of the game.

The Whole Family Side by Side

One table to compare them all, ordered from the calmest swing to the roughest. It lists the full-pay versions and the reduced 9/6 Double Double Bonus table, along with the expected result of a 720-hand hour at C$1 a hand. The figures assume perfect play and come from an exact count of every starting hand.

Read the swing and share columns together. When the swing is high and large hands carry a big share of the return, the same average is delivered in fewer and bigger payments: quiet stretches run longer and good runs pay more. Neither pattern is better, but the second asks for a deeper budget.

One more caution covers the whole family. Bring the Jacks or Better chart to Triple Double Bonus 9/7 and the return falls to 97.15% from 99.58%, with a different best hold in 21% of deals. Our hold-by-hold strategy guide shows how to avoid that.

More Guides in the Video Poker Series

Seven more guides complete the series, from the very first deal to the provincial rules. Browse them below or open the video poker hub for the full directory:

• the starter guide to video poker: what a hand costs, why the fifth coin matters and where regulated play is available.
• video poker hands and pay tables: how likely each hand is, what it adds to the return and what a 9/6 label tells you.
• how wild cards reshape video poker: what happens to the lowest paying hand and which holds turn upside down.
• multi-hand video poker and Ultimate X: extra lines and carried multipliers, and what each does to cost and swing.
• the video poker bankroll guide: how widely an hour scatters around its average and what that means for a budget.
• common video poker mistakes: short pay tables, fewer than five coins, broken flushes and more.
• video poker rules and safety in Canada: provincial models, Ontario’s standards and the tools licensed sites provide.

Bonus Rows Change the Rhythm, Not the Price

A bonus on four of a kind changes the timing of the payments, never the fact that the game has a price. Treat each of these versions as entertainment with an expected cost on every hand. Even the few tables above 100% describe a long-run average, and no hour is guaranteed a profit. Set your budget first and use the limits explained on our responsible gambling page if play stops being enjoyable.

Author:

Lucas Portela

Owner, BoldGambler • Avanhandava/SP

Oddsmaker, affiliate and content creator in the iGaming industry.

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