Bonus Poker Game Review
How to Play Bonus Poker?
Bonus Poker is based on Jacks or Better video poker, so gameplay is similar. You start by inserting money into the Bonus Poker machine, and the screen updates to display the number of credits you have. You then decide how many coins you want to play for—1 to 5. Play at BitStarz Casino!
This page covers Bonus Poker in quite a bit of detail. We explain how to play, take a look at the pay tables, and provide details on the odds and payback percentages. There’s some strategy advice too, to help you play the game optimally.
The computer then deals you a virtual hand of 5 cards. Video poker is based on draw poker, so you’re allowed to discard between 0 and 5 cards. The computer then deals you new cards to replace the ones you discarded. Based on the poker rank of your final hand, you get a payout, based on the pay table for the game.
Not all Bonus Poker games are created equal. Casinos and manufacturers can adjust the payouts for various hands. As with Jacks or Better, most of the variations occur with the Full House and Flush combination. The best combination here is 8/5, but you can find games with 7/5 and 6/5 payouts, too.
What’s a Payback Percentage?
The payback percentage represents the long-term mathematical expectation of the casino. If a game has a payback percentage of 99.17%, then over enough hands, the casino expects to keep 99.17 cents for every dollar you wager. In the short run, this will vary dramatically, but the more hands are played, the closer the actual results will resemble this long term expectation.
The flip side to the payback percentage is the house edge. This is the percentage of each dollar wagered that the casino expects to keep in the long run. The house edge is just the payback percentage subtracted from 100%. In the above example, the house edge is 0.83%.
For some reason, gambling writers usually use house edge when writing about table games, but they use payback percentage when writing about gambling machines (slots and video poker).
Traditional 8/5 Bonus Poker is often the best video poker game in the casino. If you play with the appropriate strategy, the payback percentage for this variation is 99.17%.
In a 7/5 Bonus Poker game, the payback percentage drops to 98.01%. In a 6/5 Bonus Poker game, the payback percentage drops again, this time to 96.87%.
In games with a 35 to 1 payout for any 4 of a Kind, the payback percentage is 99.66%. That might surprise some people, as they might think the 80 to 1 and 40 to 1 payouts being gone will have a big negative effect on the payback percentage. But the increase from 25 to 1 on the majority of the 4 of a Kind hands more than compensates for this.
Why Play Bonus Poker?
If you’re studying video poker games, you probably know (if you can find them) that some Jacks or Better games and Deuces Wild games offer higher paying machines.
You may also know that the proper strategy for Jacks or Better is easier to learn than the one for Bonus Poker.
But what you may not know is that it’s becoming harder to find the top paying Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better machines. Many casinos that don’t offer the best machines do offer the top Bonus Poker machines, making them the best choice in many casinos.
It can be hard to remember the correct strategy for all three of the most popular games, so if I am going out to enjoy a few games of video poker I take the strategy for each of them with me.
I never worry about getting in a real hurry while playing video poker like some players because I view it as a form of entertainment.
In the long run I’ll probably lose at video poker, but with comps and player’s club perks it won’t cost me much. So if I play 100 fewer hands an hour than someone else, I can actually enjoy my video poker play longer. Once you set a leisurely pace of play, you won’t feel the difference between a couple hundred hands per hour and five hundred hands per hour.
I mentioned playing video poker as a form of entertainment. It’s none of my business how you view your gambling, but the players I’m around that seem to be the happiest are the ones that understand that the casino does have an edge over them while they are playing video poker.
Bonus Poker Game Review
Bonus Poker also sees variations in the size of the bonuses for the 4 of a Kind hands. Some Bonus Poker games only pay 35 to 1 or 30 to 1 on any 4 of a Kind, regardless of the ranking. This has a surprising effect on your payback percentage, which we’ll discuss below.
You’ll also (rarely) find a Bonus Poker game which offers INCREASED payouts for a Full House and a Flush, like 10/8. They pay for this by reducing the payouts on the lower ranked hands, like 2 Pairs and 3 of a Kind.
In Jacks or Better video poker, the lowest paying hand is a pair of Jacks or Better, and the highest paying hand is a Royal Flush. Bonus Poker offers bonus payouts for the 4 of a Kind hand, based on what rank the cards are as part of that hand.
Since the odds of getting a particular hand are based on a standard 52 card deck of cards, you can calculate the appropriate strategy to maximize your odds of winning. You can also determine the payback percentage for the game, which is something that’s impossible to do with slot machines.
The reason should be clear, but in case it isn’t—you know the odds of getting a particular card out of a 52 card deck. There are only 4 cards of each rank, and there are only 13 cards of each suit.
But with a slot machine, you cannot know the odds of a particular symbol coming up. Even though you know the payout for a particular combination, you have no idea the odds of hitting that combination.
