How to Play Full House Bonus Video Poker

Full House Bonus video poker lives up to its name by putting the emphasis on attaining full house hands. It does this by boosting the payout for the full house by as much as 50% from many Bonus pay tables. To compensate for this boost, it lowers the payout for some more common hands that can be attained often during gameplay.

Video poker continues to draw in new players all the time, even as it maintains a strong core of those who love the game. And why wouldn’t people love it? It’s easy to play, pays back well, and gives you the chance to apply strategy to increase your potential winnings.

Jacks or Better video poker remains the most common form of the game. It’s called Jacks or Better because a pair of jacks represents the lowest hand that pays off to players. And it rewards those players who like to grind out winnings over the long haul by keeping payback for lower-paying, commonly-achieved hands honest.

But many players like the chance to get big payoffs on single hands, something that rarely happens in Jacks or Better games. That’s why video poker manufacturers came up with Bonus pay tables. Bonus Poker pay tables reward four of a kind hands more than any other winning hand besides the royal flush.

Full House Bonus video poker builds off that concept by including increased payoffs for the full house. Unlike four of a kind, which is still relatively rare to achieve, the full house is a hand you’re likely to encounter during a session of play. As a result, you’ll really enjoy the boosted payout.

When you add the full house increase to the already improved payouts for four of a kind, there are many hands in Full House Bonus video poker which can increase your bankroll in a hurry. That makes it one of the better games for those in search of quick, significant scores. And you might even be able to find a game with enviable payback percentages.

But then again, you might not. Full House Bonus video poker isn’t exactly a household variation of video poker. You might not be able to find it at your local casino or your favorite gambling website.

In addition, Full House Bonus video poker features a pay table that will return you only even money for a two pair hand. That makes it different from most Bonus pay tables, which offer 2 to 1 for that hand. Since that hand comes up often during video poker play, you’ll find that your bankroll might take a hit unless you get a rarer hand.

In the following article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about Full House Bonus video poker. We’ll go into the pay tables, how they’re different from other Bonus games, and we’ll talk about how that affects payback percentage. We’ll also look at how you can learn the proper strategy for this game so you can maximize your potential winnings.

The Benefits of Video Poker

Full House Bonus video poker essentially acts as a variation on basic video poker. The gameplay is pretty much the same. You’ll find the difference in the game’s pay tables.

If you’re new to the world of video poker, you might be surprised to learn how beneficial this game is to gamblers. First of all, you can learn how to play video poker, including Full House Bonus video poker, in practically no time at all.

Video poker requires just you and only you to play the game. There’s no need to involve casino employees or other patrons. You just have to play the machine, so there’s very little pressure involved in the situation.

The game really outshines slot machines in a lot of areas. First of all, slot machines don’t give you any chance to affect gameplay. Your success (or lack thereof) will depend entirely on luck.

Luck plays a part in video poker, as it does in any casino game. But you can also take advantage of a strategic element within the game. If you play the game wisely, you can expect bigger payback than someone making the wrong decisions while playing the game.

On top of that, video poker helps you understand gameplay because of how it’s limited by the simulated deck of 52 cards. With only 52 cards in play, the possible outcomes are finite. You can tell from probability how often you can expect to achieve hands like full house or four of a kind.

Slot machines possess no probability aspect. You simply spin the reels and hope you win. And you won’t know how often winning spins are in the offing.

Another positive aspect of video poker that comes from those limited possibilities is the opportunity to know your payback percentage and pay tables. Each video poker machine, with its unique pay table, pays out at a certain level that can be computed. You just have to combine the probabilities with the payback or you can look up the information based on the pay table.

With slot machines, you have no way of knowing how much a given machine is scheduled to pay out. And the casino doesn’t have to advertise it. You’ll be pretty much in the dark about your potential payback.

One more factor in favor of video poker is how easy it can be played online. Top gambling websites offer a wide selection of video poker games. You can play these games from any connected device and have the same experience (including the chance to win real money playing video poker) as if you were playing in a casino.

That’s a lot to like, right? Ease of play, lucrative paybacks, transparency, and comfort. Now, all you have to do is learn how to play the game. We’ll teach you how to play video poker, then talk about the twist in Full House Bonus video poker.

Step 1: Creating a Bankroll

Your bankroll is the money you’ll be using to make your bets in Full House Bonus video poker. If you’re playing on a machine, simply insert money or a redemption ticket. Online players can create a bankroll by forming an account at the website of your choice.

When you enter this money, you won’t see it come up on the screen as dollars or whatever currency you might have used. The money will be rendered as credits or coins. Each of these units will be equal to whatever denomination you’re playing.

Some machines will let you choose the denomination. Others will have it predetermined. Denominations can range from smaller amounts like penny or nickel to bigger amounts like a dollar.

Step 2: Making a Bet

With Full House Bonus video poker, you have the opportunity to bet between one and five credits for each hand you play. You can switch up the betting amount every hand but you shouldn’t.

In actuality, the best way to play Full House Bonus video poker, and most other video poker games where the top limit for betting is five coins, is to bet the maximum amount on every hand. There’s a button on most video poker machines called “Max Bet.” Hit it every time you’re ready for a deal.

If you are betting between one and four coins and manage to achieve a royal flush, you’ll end up with a payback of 250 to 1. Not bad, right? But it pales next to the 800 to 1 payback you would get if you achieved the hand with a five-coin wager.

You might find that betting five coins per hand is too expensive for you. If that’s the case, you are better off finding a machine with a lower denomination. Don’t short-change yourself by lowering your bet.

Step 3: Playing a Hand

If you’ve ever played Five-Card Draw Poker, you will quickly understand the basic gameplay of video poker. First, you’ll get a deal of five cards.

Then, you can discard as many of those cards as you want and draw from the deck to replace them. The goal is to make the best possible hand through this process.

But there are differences. When you’re playing Five-Card Draw Poker, you have to make a hand that beats everyone else at the table to win. If not, you have to try to bluff your way to winning the hand.

But winning at video poker is simpler. You just have to form one of the winning hands listed on the game’s pay table. Do that, and you’ll be paid according to the pay table.

What are those winning hands? Well, different pay tables might include different thresholds for what kind of hand is worthy of payback. But, in the case of Full House Bonus video poker, you’ll be trying to make one of the following hands:

• Pair of jacks or better
• Two pair
• Three of a kind
• Straight (five cards of consecutive rank, like 3-4-5-6-7)
• Flush (five cards of same suit)
• Full house (three of a kind and two pair in the same hand)
• Four of a kind
• Straight flush (straight with five cards of same suit)
• Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)

The hands at the top of this list tend to come up relatively often during video poker gameplay. By contrast, hands like the royal flush or straight flush are rarities. As you move down the list, payback tends to rise, which you’ll notice when we get to pay tables.

Once you’ve placed your bet, you’ll see five cards on the screen. These cards will come from a simulated 52-card deck within the machine’s software. Imagine that this deck is always being shuffled, waiting for you to press the button so it can spit out the top five cards.

Knowing that this process is random will prevent you from making poor decisions. Many people fall for the old video poker urban legend that some machines are “due” to pay out just because they haven’t in a while. Or you might think that, because you received aces on the last four hands, that there’s no way you’ll get another one on the current hand.

Video poker doesn’t work that way. Every deal and draw is completely random and independent of everything that happened before. Your chances and probabilities never change, which is what allows you to come up with a coherent strategy.

When you see these five cards, you will assess them to see if there are any winning combinations. Even if there aren’t, there might be “seeds” of a winning combination, meaning you are just a card or two shy of a winning hand. That is where the draw comes into play.

In every round, you will have to decide which cards you want to hold and which you want to discard. This also applies to Full House Bonus video poker. The ones you discard will be replaced with other cards from the deck with only 47 cards remaining.

You might want to hold on to all five cards if you were lucky enough to be dealt a winning hand. In Full House Bonus video poker, a full house has an increased payback. You can get rid of all five cards if you don’t see any good “seeds.” You can also come up with some combination of cards you want to hold or discard.

Let’s take a look at a sample hand to see how it works. Imagine you received the following deal:

As is, this hand has a winning combination in the pair of jacks. It won’t pay off too much (even money), but if you kept the jacks and discarded everything else, you could improve it on the draw. Maybe you could end up with two pair, three of a kind, a full house, or even four of a kind.

But you might want to go in another direction. If you were to keep the four spades in your hand, you could possibly draw to a flush. After all, there will still be 10 spades in the deck of 47.

One other possibility would be to keep only the four, five, and six of spades. This trio makes three out of five for a straight flush, one of the highest-paying hands in the game. If you go in that direction, you could also conceivably draw to just a flush with two more spades of any kind.

As you can see, this decision shows you how video poker pits risk against reward. The pair of jacks is safe but doesn’t pay much unless you improve it. At the other end of the spectrum, the straight flush pays very well, but you’ll need a lot of luck on the draw to achieve it.

In any case, once you’ve made your decision about what to hold and discard, press the buttons corresponding to the cards you want to hold. The machine will then replace the cards you’ve discarded with ones from the top of that ever-shuffling deck. Your hand is over at this point and it will be scored, with any winnings added to your credits.

If you wish to keep playing, you simply have to repeat the steps above. Once you run out of credits, you will have to replenish your bankroll. Or you could cash out whatever you have left in your bankroll at any time to stop playing.

You should be able to learn the process of playing video poker in no time. In fact, most people play several hands a minute not long after they learn the rules. That’s one of the great things about the game.

Once you know these basics, you can start to think about the differences in other variations of the game. In the case of Full House Bonus video poker, these differences come into play when you look at the pay table.

Pay Table for Full House Bonus Video Poker

The pay table represents the most important piece of information you can get from a video poker machine (or online version of the game). You can obviously tell what you’ll get paid from each winning hand by looking at it. But it will also indirectly help you with strategy, reveal the overall payback percentage, and dictate how volatile the game is.

The strategy part comes because you should be basing your holds and discards on how the pay table rewards certain hands. In Full House Bonus video poker, for example, full houses and four of a kind are at a premium, while two pair hands are discounted. That information should be considered while deciding what to hold or discard.

As far as volatility goes, that term refers to the way a certain pay table will impact the expected flow of winning or losing. A low-volatility game usually means a player can play for a long time on a small bankroll, although there might not be much chance for big payouts. High-volatility games increase the chances for big payouts, but also lead to bigger swings between winning and losing.

To understand a Full House Bonus video poker pay table, it’s first important to give it some context. First, let’s take a look at the pay table for Jacks or Better, which is the basis for all other video poker games.

Jacks or Better Pay Table

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind	25	50	75	100	125
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Jacks or Better is known as a low-volatility game. The royal flush provides your only real chance for a huge payoff. Payoffs are based on the frequency that the hands appear during gameplay.

Bonus Poker video poker amps up the volatility by increasing the payoff for four of a kind hands. Even though those hands show up more often in gameplay than the straight flush, they still pay off more in Bonus pay tables.

Here is a Bonus Poker pay table that you might encounter.

Bonus Poker Pay Table

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind (aces)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	45	90	135	180	225
Four of a kind (any other)	25	50	75	100	125
Full house	8	16	24	32	40
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Now that we have the baselines established, we can take a look at what the full-pay pay table for Full House Bonus video poker looks like. In case you’re wondering, full-pay means it’s the version of the pay table that will return the highest payback percentage to the player.

Coins/Hands	1 coin	2 coins	3 coins	4 coins	5 coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1000	4000
Straight flush	100	200	300	400	500
Four of a kind (aces)	200	400	600	800	1000
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	40	80	120	160	200
Four of a kind (any other)	25	50	75	100	125
Full house	12	24	36	48	60
Flush	8	16	24	32	40
Straight	5	10	15	20	25
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pair	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

As you can tell right away, Full House Bonus video poker lives up to its name with the increased payback on full house hands. At 12 to 1 odds, you can really get a boost from other games in this department. Note how the Jacks or Better pays 9 to 1 and the Bonus Poker pays 8 to 1 for a full house.

Although it doesn’t advertise it in its name, Full House Bonus video poker pays off better for a flush hand as well. You can get 8 to 1 for a flush on Full House Bonus video poker, much higher than is the case for the two pay tables above.

Where Full House Bonus video poker compensates is by discounting the two pair hand to even money. That discount is costly because two pair hands show up often during gameplay. You can expect two pair to show up once out of every 10 hands.

Despite all of the differences among the pay tables, they all pay out similar amounts. They each have payback percentages of over 99% at the full-pay level. Any payback percentage of over 99% is recommended.

Over the long term, these three versions of video poker pay you about the same. But short-term players have to be aware of the volatility. Full House Bonus video poker ranks pretty high on the volatility scale.

With the increased payouts for the full house, flush, and the Bonus-style four of a kind payouts, Full House Bonus video poker gives you more chances for quick, significant scores than the other two games. But because of the low pay for two pair, you could find it hard to sustain your bankroll without those other hands showing up.

You might prefer that style if you like the idea of jackpots and other big payoffs that happen in a hurry. If not, stick to a game that’s less volatile like Jacks or Better.

Full House Bonus Video Poker Strategy

To learn strategy for Full House Bonus video poker, you have to know where to look. If you don’t make the mathematically correct plays for every possible deal you might receive, your payback will drop.

Full House Bonus video poker isn’t the most popular video poker game, so it might be difficult to find help. But, if you can, here are two areas you should be looking into.

Strategy Charts

When you find a strategy chart for Full House Bonus video poker, you’ll see a list of card combinations. The ones at the top provide the highest expected value. As you move down through the list, the expected value drops.

You will be looking at your own deal and comparing the combinations that you have to ones on the list. When you see the combination that is ranked highest on the list, you will know which one to play. And you will also know which cards you should be discarding.

The best way to use a strategy chart for Full House Bonus video poker is to memorize it. If you try to bring it into the casino with you, casino employees might frown on your efforts. Even if you could, it would slow you down to look at the chart for every hand.

Video Poker Training Software

The beauty of video poker training software is that you can customize it to suit any type of video poker you might be playing. All you would have to do is to enter the pay table figures for Full House Bonus video poker. Once you’ve done that, the software will tailor your instruction to those figures.

No matter how you approach it, you will eventually learn all of the right plays. Video poker training software also provides great instruction for those playing the game for the first time. They can get the rhythm of play while learning proper strategy.

Conclusion on Full House Bonus Video Poker

Full House Bonus video poker adjusts pay tables drastically from basic Jacks or Better games. Hands like the full house, the flush, and four of a kind should be your target when you play. Just be prepared for the discounted two pair hands to cause a somewhat volatile video poker experience.