Compare Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, and Double Bonus variants. Discover full-pay tables, exact returns, kickers, and game swings.
Published:Most video poker games you will find are variations on Jacks or Better: the same five-card draw and the same hands, with a pay table that moves money from some rows to others. Bonus games pay extra for four of a kind and recover the cost by trimming the full house, the flush or two pair. This guide covers the best-known members of the family, which are Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, Bonus Poker Deluxe, Aces and Faces, All American, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus and Triple Double Bonus, with the pay table to look for in each, the exact return and what every change does to the swings.
Key Takeaways: Video Poker Variants and Bonus Games
- Bonus Pay Table Tradeoffs: Bonus variants boost four-of-a-kind payouts by reducing returns on common hands like two pair or full houses, shifting prize value into rarer hits.
- Swings Demand Bigger Budgets: Games like Triple Double Bonus carry a 9.9-bet swing per hand, more than double the base game, requiring a deeper bankroll to handle dry spells.
- Full-Pay Returns Exceed 100%: Tables like 10/7 Double Bonus offer returns above 100% with optimal play, but high volatility still leads to short-term losing sessions for most players.
- Strategy Changes Across Versions: Each variant alters optimal holds, meaning using standard Jacks or Better strategy on bonus tables causes costly errors and lowers expected return.
Jacks or Better: The Baseline Game
Jacks or Better is the most common variation of video poker and the yardstick for the rest. Its lowest paying hand is a pair of jacks, and its full-pay 9/6 table pays, for each coin bet, 800 for a royal flush on five coins, 50 for a straight flush, 25 for four of a kind, 9 for a full house, 6 for a flush, 4 for a straight, 3 for three of a kind, 2 for two pair and 1 for a pair of jacks or better.
Perfect play returns 99.54%, so the house edge is 0.46%. 45.5% of hands pay something, and the typical swing is 4.4 bets per hand. Those figures are the standard the other games are measured against: a variation is worth a look only if it changes the return, the share of hands that pay or the size of the swings in a way you want.
The Pay Tables Side by Side
Every game below keeps the same deck and the same hands and spreads the money differently. A bonus game raises the pay on four of a kind, then takes the cost back from the rows above and below it. The table shows the rows that change, per coin bet, for the full-pay table of each game.
| Game and pay table | Four of a kind | Full house | Flush | Straight | Three of a kind | Two pair |
| Jacks or Better 9/6 | 25 | 9 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Bonus Poker 8/5 | 80 for aces, 40 for 2s to 4s, 25 for 5s to kings | 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Bonus Poker Deluxe 9/6 | 80 for every rank | 9 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Aces and Faces 8/5 | 80 for aces, 40 for jacks to kings, 25 for 2s to 10s | 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| Double Bonus Poker 10/7 | 160 for aces, 80 for 2s to 4s, 50 for 5s to kings | 10 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| Double Double Bonus Poker 10/6 | Kicker table below | 10 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Triple Double Bonus Poker 9/7 | Kicker table below | 9 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| All American Poker 35/8 | 35 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 3 | 1 |
All eight tables pay 800 for each coin on a royal flush and 1 for a pair of jacks or better. The straight flush pays 50 in all of them except All American, where it pays 200.
Bonus Poker and Bonus Poker Deluxe
Bonus Poker is Jacks or Better with a bonus on four of a kind: aces pay 80, twos, threes and fours pay 40 and the other ranks pay 25, as in the base game. The bonus is paid for by cutting the full house from 9 to 8 and the flush from 6 to 5. The full-pay 8/5 table returns 99.17%, which is about 0.4 percentage points below Jacks or Better 9/6, and the swing rises from 4.4 to 4.6.
Bonus Poker Deluxe flattens the bonus: every four of a kind pays 80, and two pair drops from 2 to 1, so it merely returns the stake. At 9/6 the return is 99.64%, slightly above Jacks or Better, and the swing climbs to 5.7. Four of a kind still lands about once in 424 hands, the same rhythm as in the base game, but each one now pays 80 instead of 25, and hands paying 25 or more supply 21% of the return, against 8% in Jacks or Better.
Aces and Faces and All American Poker
Aces and Faces ties the bonus to the picture cards: four aces pay 80, four jacks, queens or kings pay 40 and four twos through tens pay 25. The full-pay table is 8/5 and returns 99.26%, a shade above Bonus Poker 8/5 and with the same swing of 4.6.
All American Poker is built differently. A full house, a flush and a straight all pay 8, the straight flush pays 200 and four of a kind pays 35. At 35/8 it returns 99.60%, and only 41.8% of hands pay anything, the lowest share of any game in this guide. The flat 8 changes what is worth chasing. Dealt 7♥ 6♠ 5♦ 4♥ 4♣, a pair of fours is worth 0.82 per coin bet in 9/6 Jacks or Better and the four-card straight only 0.68, so the pair wins. In All American the pair is worth just 0.68 and the same four-card straight is worth 1.36, so the best play flips.
Double Bonus Poker: Where 10/7 Passes the Break-Even Line
Double Bonus Poker doubles the Bonus Poker prizes: aces pay 160, twos through fours pay 80 and the other ranks pay 50, while two pair drops to 1 and the straight rises to 5. The full-pay table is 10/7, a full house at 10 and a flush at 7, and it returns 100.17%. Reduced versions pay noticeably less: 9/7 returns 99.11%, 10/6 returns 98.88% and 9/6 returns 97.81%.
The bonus is paid for elsewhere. Only 43.3% of hands pay anything, against 45.5% in Jacks or Better, and the swing rises to 5.3. Hands paying 25 or more supply 18% of the return, so a long stretch without a four of a kind drains the balance faster than it does in the base game. The higher straight pay changes some holds as well: with that same 7♥ 6♠ 5♦ 4♥ 4♣ deal, the four-card straight is worth 0.85 in Double Bonus and edges out the pair at 0.83.
A return above 100% is not a promise of profit. It describes the average of an enormous number of hands played perfectly. In a 600-hand hour on 10/7 Double Bonus the chance of finishing ahead is still only 41%, and the middle result is a loss of $27.50 at $1.25 a hand. Our guide to bankroll and volatility shows how those odds are worked out.
Double Double Bonus and Triple Double Bonus Poker
These two games add the kicker, the fifth card in a four-of-a-kind hand. The rank of the kicker changes what the hand pays, and the biggest prizes go to four aces or four low cards with the right fifth card:
| Four of a kind | Double Double Bonus | Triple Double Bonus |
| Four aces with a 2, 3 or 4 as the kicker | 400 | 800 |
| Four aces with any other kicker | 160 | 160 |
| Four 2s, 3s or 4s with an ace, 2, 3 or 4 as the kicker | 160 | 400 |
| Four 2s, 3s or 4s with a 5 through king as the kicker | 80 | 80 |
| Four 5s through kings | 50 | 50 |
Double Double Bonus returns 100.07% at the full-pay 10/6 table and 98.98% at 9/6, falling to 97.87% at 9/5 and 96.79% at 8/5. Its swing is 6.5 bets per hand. The top prize is rare: four aces with a 2, 3 or 4 lands about once in 16,236 hands and pays 400.
Triple Double Bonus pushes the idea further. Three of a kind drops to 2, and the top kicker hands pay 800 and 400. The full-pay 9/7 table returns 99.58%, but 9/6 returns 98.15% and 8/5 returns 95.97%, and the swing is 9.9 bets per hand, more than double the 4.4 of Jacks or Better. Hands paying 25 or more supply 28% of its return.
The Versions Compared
The table puts the full-pay versions and the reduced 9/6 Double Double Bonus table in one view. All figures assume perfect play and come from the exact count of every starting hand.
| Version | Return with perfect play | Hands that pay | Swing per hand (in bets) | Return from hands paying 25 or more |
| Jacks or Better 9/6 | 99.54% | 45.5% | 4.4 | 8% |
| Bonus Poker 8/5 | 99.17% | 45.5% | 4.6 | 10% |
| Bonus Poker Deluxe 9/6 | 99.64% | 45.2% | 5.7 | 21% |
| Aces and Faces 8/5 | 99.26% | 45.5% | 4.6 | 10% |
| Double Bonus Poker 10/7 | 100.17% | 43.3% | 5.3 | 18% |
| Double Double Bonus Poker 10/6 | 100.07% | 44.7% | 6.5 | 21% |
| Double Double Bonus Poker 9/6 | 98.98% | 44.7% | 6.5 | 21% |
| Triple Double Bonus Poker 9/7 | 99.58% | 43.3% | 9.9 | 28% |
| All American Poker 35/8 | 99.60% | 41.8% | 5.1 | 13% |
Read the last two columns together. A higher swing and a bigger share of return from big hands mean the same return arrives in fewer, larger payments, so bad stretches last longer and good ones are bigger. Neither shape is better, but the second one needs a larger budget to ride out the dry spells.
One more caution applies to every game here: each pay table has its own best holds. Playing the 9/6 Jacks or Better chart on Triple Double Bonus 9/7 returns 97.15% instead of 99.58%, and the best hold differs in 21% of deals. The video poker hold guide covers how to avoid that.
Explore the Other Video Poker Guides
This guide is one of eight in the video poker hub. Seven more cover the rest of the game, from the first deal to the rules:
- beginner basics for video poker: reading the pay table, the credit meter and the buttons before you bet.
- video poker hands and pay tables: how often each hand lands and what the 9/6 label really means.
- how wild cards change video poker: why the lowest paying hand moves up and the swings grow.
- multi-hand video poker, Ultimate X, and Spin Poker: how extra lines, multipliers and grids change the cost and the swings.
- the video poker math guide: house edge, hit frequency and the odds of finishing an hour ahead.
- how to choose which cards to hold: the order of preference for 9/6 Jacks or Better and why it changes by game.
- video poker regulations and player safety: who regulates the game in the US, how it is tested and what unlicensed sites take away.
Bonuses Change the Shape, Not the Price
A bonus on four of a kind changes when the money arrives, not whether the game has a cost. Each version here is paid entertainment with an expected cost on every hand unless the return passes break-even, and even then no hour can promise a profit. Set a budget before you play and use the tools described on our responsible gaming page if play stops being fun.
❓ Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, and Double Bonus Poker: Frequently Asked Questions
Which Jacks or Better pay table is the best?
Is Double Double Bonus better than Jacks or Better?
What is a kicker in video poker?
Author:
Lucas Portela
Owner, BoldGambler • Avanhandava/SP
Oddsmaker, affiliate and content creator in the iGaming industry.