If you want a video poker game with more upside on quads than plain Jacks or Better, double bonus poker is a reasonable place to spend time — and Habanero offers a free demo, so you can read the pay chart and practise the holds at no cost. The catch is that no return figure has been published for this specific version, and in this game category the pay chart decides the return more than anything else. That makes the demo the useful part: open it, read the payout schedule, and decide from the numbers rather than the name.
Is Double Bonus Poker worth your time?
Worth your time as a free game, yes: the demo is available, it costs nothing, and Double Bonus is one of the more interesting variants to learn because its bonus structure genuinely changes which cards you keep. Worth your money is a separate question, and this listing does not contain the information you would need to answer it. There is no published RTP figure and no published paytable for Habanero’s version.
That is not a reason to avoid the game. It is a reason to treat the in-game pay chart as the first screen you look at. In most casino game categories, the difference between a good and a poor version of the “same” game is small or hidden. Here it is printed on the screen in front of you, in numbers you can read before you stake anything.
Habanero has 12 games in this catalogue, and this one sits at rank 44 overall, in the 69th percentile for popularity — moderately played rather than a headline title. If you already know how to play a bonus-style paytable, the demo will tell you within a minute whether this particular pay chart is one you want.
Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild or something else? What the name tells you
The name identifies this as a Double Bonus variant, which is a specific and well-documented family. Double Bonus is built on the Jacks or Better skeleton — you need at least a pair of jacks to be paid anything — but it layers enhanced payouts on top for particular four-of-a-kind ranks. Four aces pays the most, four 2s through 4s pays a middle tier, and four 5s through kings pays the base quad rate.
That tiering is the whole point of the variant, and it has a real strategic consequence. Because low quads are worth more than they are in Jacks or Better, hands containing 2s, 3s and 4s become more valuable to chase, and there are documented spots where you break a made hand to keep a low-card draw that plain Jacks or Better would tell you to keep intact. Double Bonus paytables also typically hand back some of that value by trimming another line elsewhere in the chart.
What the name does not tell you is where Habanero set those numbers. The variant family is known; this table’s specific figures are not in this listing. Read them in the game.
Return to player: not published
There is no RTP figure for this version, and pretending otherwise would be guesswork. What can be said precisely is how the number gets set in the first place. A video poker RTP is fully determined by two things: the payout schedule for each hand rank, and the player following the mathematically optimal hold-and-discard chart for that exact schedule. There is no reel weighting, no hidden symbol frequency, no house style layered on top. Each hand comes from a freshly shuffled 52-card deck.
That transparency is why the pay chart matters so much. The textbook illustration is Jacks or Better: the 9/6 paytable, paying 9-for-1 on a full house and 6-for-1 on a flush, returns roughly 99.5% with perfect play. Shift those two numbers to 8/5 and the same game returns about 97.3%. Drop to 6/5 and you are well below 95%. Two numbers, more than four percentage points of swing.
Double Bonus paytables behave the same way. Full-pay versions of the variant are quoted around 100% with flawless play; reduced versions sit several points lower. Since this listing gives you neither the schedule nor the figure, the honest answer is that you cannot know the return until you read the chart in the game itself.
The five-card draw and your one real decision
Mechanically this is straightforward. You are dealt five cards, you choose which to keep, the rest are replaced from the same deck, and the final five are paid according to the chart. One decision per hand, and that decision is the only thing under your control.
Optimal strategy for video poker is a solved, publishable hold-and-discard chart — a specific one for each paytable. It is not a betting system. It tells you which five cards to keep; it never changes the odds behind the deck. Deviating costs you return and nothing else. On a Double Bonus chart, the chart will differ from a Jacks or Better chart precisely because of the low-quad bonuses.
Here is how the tiering typically looks in the variant, using well-known general figures rather than this table’s unpublished numbers:
| Hand | Typical Double Bonus payout (per coin, 5 coins bet) |
|---|---|
| Four aces | 160 |
| Four 2s, 3s or 4s | 80 |
| Four 5s through kings | 50 |
| Full house | 9 or 10 |
| Flush | 6 or 7 |
| Straight | 5 |
| Three of a kind | 3 |
Treat that as the shape of the family, not as this game’s chart. The in-game schedule is authoritative.
How Double Bonus Poker compares to other video poker
The average published RTP across this catalogue is 97.5%, which is a fair benchmark for a game whose own figure is missing. Full-pay Double Bonus would clear it comfortably; a trimmed version might not. Without the chart, you cannot place this one on that scale.
If you want a published number to compare against, Jacks or Better (Red Rake Gaming) lists 99.55%, which is roughly the 9/6 benchmark and a useful reference point for what a strong video poker paytable looks like. For a different wild-card ruleset from the same studio, Joker Poker (Habanero) adds a joker to the deck and shifts the strategy chart accordingly. And if you prefer a fixed-hand table game with no draw decision at all, Three Card Poker is a different proposition entirely.
Across the Cards video poker games in this catalogue there are 50 titles, so there is no shortage of alternatives if this pay chart turns out to be a reduced one.
Bankroll and session limits
Double Bonus is a higher-variance chart than plain Jacks or Better. The enhanced quad payouts have to be funded from somewhere, so the routine hands pay slightly less and more of the return arrives in rare, large hits. In practice that means longer flat stretches between the hands you are hoping for, even with perfect play on a good paytable.
Decide your budget before you open the game, not during a session, and size it so a run of losing hands does not force a decision you did not plan to make. Multi-hand formats, if offered, do not change the per-hand return — they raise the number of hands you play per minute, and your exposure with them.
Video poker is 18+ and it is entertainment you pay for, not income. Set a figure you are comfortable spending, stop when you reach it, and keep the demo for practice rather than as a preview of results — free play does not predict real-money outcomes, and every deal comes from a fresh shuffle with no memory of the last one. No staking pattern changes expected value; only the paytable and your holds do.
Verdict
Play the demo. Read the pay chart. Then decide. Habanero’s version of this variant has no published paytable and no published RTP, which means the single most decision-relevant number in the game is only visible from inside it. That is a genuine gap in the listing, not a mark against the game.
The variant itself is sound and interesting — a Jacks or Better base with tiered four-of-a-kind bonuses that reward learning a chart built around low quads. If the in-game numbers look like full-pay Double Bonus, this is competitive with anything in the category. If they have been trimmed, the catalogue average of 97.5% and the 99.55% listed elsewhere give you a clear sense of what you are giving up. Either way, checking takes about thirty seconds and costs nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you play Double Bonus Poker for free?
Yes, a free demo of Double Bonus Poker is available, so you can deal hands, read the payout schedule and practise the hold decisions without staking money. That matters more here than in most categories, because the demo is where you can inspect the pay chart that determines the game's actual return.
What is the RTP of Double Bonus Poker by Habanero?
No RTP figure is published for this version. In video poker the return is set entirely by the payout schedule plus optimal play, with no reel weighting involved, so the in-game pay chart is the only reliable source. For reference, the catalogue average across these games is 97.5%.
Which video poker variant is this and how do you play it optimally?
The name identifies it as a Double Bonus variant: a Jacks or Better base needing at least a pair of jacks, with enhanced payouts on specific four-of-a-kind ranks. Optimal play means following the published hold-and-discard chart for that exact paytable, which favours low-card quad draws more than standard Jacks or Better.
Why does the paytable matter so much in video poker?
Because it is the whole of the return, together with your holds. Jacks or Better pays about 99.5% on a 9/6 chart and roughly 97.3% on 8/5 — a swing of over two points from two numbers. Double Bonus paytables vary the same way, so read the chart first.
Who makes Double Bonus Poker and what else do they offer?
Habanero, which has 12 games in this catalogue. If you want a different wild-card ruleset from the same studio, Joker Poker (Habanero) adds a joker to the deck and uses its own strategy chart. All American Poker is another draw variant with a reshaped payout structure worth comparing.
