If you want a video poker game where the return is published, high, and verifiable, this one qualifies: bonus poker from Red Rake Gaming carries a stated RTP of 99.17%, which sits 1.67 percentage points above the 97.5% average across the games catalogued here. That figure assumes you play every hand to the mathematically optimal hold, so it is a ceiling you work towards rather than a number you get for free.
The game is worth your time if you are willing to learn a hold chart. If you plan to play on instinct, you will still be playing a fair single-deck draw game, but you will not see anything close to the advertised return.
What kind of video poker is Bonus Poker?
The name identifies the family directly. Bonus Poker is a five-card draw variant built on the Jacks or Better skeleton — you are paid from a pair of jacks upward, you hold what you want from the initial five cards, and the discards are replaced from the same 52-card deck. The distinguishing feature is in the name: specific four-of-a-kind ranks pay at enhanced rates rather than a single flat quad payout.
In the standard version of this variant, quad aces pay the most, quads of 2s, 3s and 4s pay a middle rate, and quads from 5s through kings pay the base rate. That structure changes the strategy meaningfully. Holding a single low pair over a marginal four-card draw becomes more attractive when that pair can turn into a premium quad, and the ranks of your cards start to matter in situations where plain Jacks or Better would treat them as interchangeable.
What the name does not tell you is this table’s exact payout schedule. Red Rake Gaming has not published the full pay chart for this version in the listing data available here, so the specific multipliers on each four-of-a-kind tier, and on the full house and flush, need to be read off the in-game pay chart before you commit money.
The maths of a single hand
Each hand starts from a freshly shuffled 52-card deck. That is the structural difference between video poker and a slot: there is no reel weighting, no hidden symbol frequency, and no adjustable hit rate behind the scenes. The probability of any five-card deal is a straightforward combinatorial fact, and the probability of improving a held hand on the draw is calculable from the cards left in the deck.
That transparency is why video poker has a solved strategy at all. For any given paytable, someone can compute the expected value of every possible hold from every possible deal, and publish the result as a chart. Following that chart is what produces the quoted return. Deviating from it costs you expected value, sometimes a fraction of a percent, sometimes considerably more on close decisions.
Two things follow. First, no deal is ever influenced by the one before it — the deck is reset, so a machine is never due for a royal flush and never cold after one. Second, no betting pattern changes any of this. Raising your stake after a losing hand changes how much money moves per deal and nothing about the odds of the next five cards. The house edge lives in the paytable and in your hold decisions, and those are the only two levers that exist.
Where the 99.17% comes from
The 99.17% figure is the sum of every possible outcome multiplied by what this game’s pay chart awards for it, assuming perfect play throughout. It is a long-run average across a very large number of hands, not a description of a session. Over a hundred hands you can easily be up or down a long way from it; the number only asserts itself over tens of thousands.
Against context, it holds up well. Red Rake Gaming’s twenty games in this catalogue average 98.89%, so this one sits slightly above its own provider’s typical figure and comfortably above the 97.5% corpus average. It ranks 41st overall and lands in the 71st percentile for popularity across the 50 games carrying the Cards theme.
Worth understanding clearly: this figure is a property of the paytable, not of the brand or the variant. Two games both called Bonus Poker, both dealt from a single fair deck, can differ by more than a percentage point purely because one pays less on the full house or the flush. The 99.17% belongs to this specific version’s pay chart, and it only materialises if your holds match the optimal chart for that same pay chart.
Reading the pay chart before you bet real money
This is the habit that separates numerate video poker players from everyone else. Before your first real-money hand, open the pay chart and read the payouts for the hands you will actually make often — the full house, the flush, the straight, three of a kind, two pair — and the four-of-a-kind tiers that give this variant its name.
The table below shows the well-known general structure for standard Bonus Poker at one coin. Treat it as a reference shape, not as this game’s confirmed numbers.
| Hand | Typical Bonus Poker payout (per coin) |
|---|---|
| Four aces | 80 |
| Four 2s, 3s or 4s | 40 |
| Four 5s through kings | 25 |
| Full house | 8 |
| Flush | 5 |
| Straight | 4 |
| Three of a kind | 3 |
| Two pair | 2 |
| Jacks or better | 1 |
The comparison that makes the point is Jacks or Better. Its 9-for-1 full house and 6-for-1 flush produce roughly 99.5% with perfect play; drop those two numbers to 8 and 5 and the return falls to about 97.3%; drop them to 6 and 5 and it sinks below 95%. Two entries on a chart, more than four points of return. Check them.
How Bonus Poker compares to other games
Within Red Rake Gaming’s own range, the straight comparison is Jacks or Better (Red Rake Gaming) at 99.55% — a higher return, but with a flat four-of-a-kind payout and correspondingly flatter variance, so you trade the chance of a premium quad for a marginally better long-run figure. If the bonus structure is what appeals to you, Double Aces and Faces at 99.27% applies the same idea to a different set of ranks.
The highest published return among the provider’s video poker titles here belongs to Royal Court at 99.78%, which is worth a look if you are optimising purely for return and are happy to learn a different hold chart. Elsewhere in the Cards theme, Russian Poker at 98.42% is a different game shape altogether rather than a draw-poker variant.
None of these differences are large in absolute terms, and all of them are dwarfed by the gap between playing optimally and playing casually. A 99.55% game played by feel will return less than a 99.17% game played to chart.
Free demo and staying in control
A Bonus Poker free demo is available, and it is the sensible place to build the habit. Deal a few hundred hands with a hold chart open beside you and work out where your instincts diverge from it — the low-pair-versus-four-to-a-flush decisions, and when the rank of a pair changes the answer. That practice transfers directly, because the chart does not care whether the stake is real.
What the demo cannot do is forecast money outcomes. A hot run of quads in demo play says nothing about the next session, because each deal starts from a reshuffled deck and carries no memory of the last.
Play only if you are 18 or older, decide your budget before the first hand rather than during a losing run, and treat the money as the price of the entertainment rather than as something you expect back. A 99.17% return is still a return under 100%.
Final verdict
This is a solid, honest video poker game with a published return above both its provider’s average and the wider catalogue average, built on a variant whose strategy is well documented and freely available. The four-of-a-kind bonuses give it more texture than plain Jacks or Better without demanding a wholly unfamiliar strategy.
Two caveats. The full pay chart for this specific version is not published in the data available here, and since the paytable determines the return almost entirely, that is the first thing to check in-game. And the 99.17% is contingent on optimal play — it is what the game offers, not what casual play collects. Learn the chart in the demo, verify the payouts, then decide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I play Bonus Poker for free without downloading anything?
Yes. A free demo of Red Rake Gaming's Bonus Poker is available with no download required, running in the browser with play-money credits. It is the practical way to rehearse hold decisions against a strategy chart before staking real money, since the underlying deck and hand probabilities are identical to the real-money version.
What is the RTP of Bonus Poker and what determines it?
The stated RTP is 99.17%, which is 1.67 percentage points above the 97.5% average across the games listed here. That figure comes from two things only: this version's payout schedule and the player following the optimal hold chart for that exact schedule. Casual play returns less; no staking pattern changes it.
Which video poker variant is Bonus Poker and how do you play it optimally?
It is a five-card draw variant on the Jacks or Better base, paying from a pair of jacks upward, with enhanced payouts on specific four-of-a-kind ranks. Optimal play means following a published hold chart for this paytable. The quad bonuses make low pairs worth holding more often than in plain Jacks or Better.
Why does the paytable matter more in video poker than in other casino games?
Because it is the whole game. There is no reel weighting or hidden frequency — each hand is dealt from a fair 52-card deck, so the return is fixed by what each hand rank pays. In Jacks or Better, changing only the full house and flush payouts swings the return from about 99.5% down below 95%.
How does Bonus Poker compare to Jacks or Better from the same provider?
Jacks or Better (Red Rake Gaming) publishes a higher 99.55% return against this game's 99.17%, but pays a flat rate on all four of a kind. Bonus Poker trades that small edge for premium payouts on specific quad ranks, which raises variance and shifts several hold decisions in the strategy chart.
