The Pay Table Is the First Thing You Read
You sit down at a video poker machine, and before you put a single coin in, you look at the pay table. In Triple Double Bonus Poker, that screen is not decoration. It tells you which hands the game rewards most heavily and, just as importantly, which hands it pays almost nothing for. The same game title can appear on two machines with different pay tables, and those differences change how you should play certain hands.
Triple Double Bonus is a variant of video poker built on the five-card draw format. You are dealt five cards, you choose which to hold and which to discard, and the machine replaces your discards. Your final five cards form a poker hand, and the pay table pays you according to that hand's rank. The word "bonus" signals that the game pays extra for certain four-of-a-kind hands, and "triple double" refers to the unusually high payouts attached to specific four-of-a-kind combinations made up of aces and low cards.
How a Round Works
The sequence is mechanical and repeats exactly the same way every hand. You choose a stake, which in most versions means betting between one and five coins per hand. The machine deals five cards face up. You then select which cards to hold by touching them or pressing the buttons beneath them. Cards you do not hold are discarded when you press the deal or draw button, and the machine replaces them with new cards from the remaining deck. The final five cards are compared against the pay table, and any win is credited to your balance.
The decision point is the hold selection. Nothing else you do during the round matters. The machine's random number generator has already determined the deck order, and the draw is not influenced by how quickly you press the button, how much you bet, or whether you have won or lost previous hands. Your entire job is to identify which of the thirty-two possible ways to hold or discard your five cards gives the best expected return for that specific pay table.
Reading the Hand Rankings
Triple Double Bonus uses standard video poker hand rankings, from a pair of jacks or better at the bottom up through a royal flush at the top. The rankings follow conventional poker order: jacks or better, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and royal flush. The game's name comes from how it treats four-of-a-kind hands, and that treatment reshapes the strategy in ways that surprise players coming from other video poker variants.
In most video poker games, all four-of-a-kind hands pay the same amount. Triple Double Bonus splits them into distinct categories with different payouts. Four aces with a kicker of a two, three, or four pays the most. Four twos, threes, or fours with an ace, two, three, or four as the kicker pay the next tier. Four aces without the qualifying kicker pay less. Four twos, threes, or fours without the qualifying kicker pay less still. And four fives through kings pay the lowest four-of-a-kind amount. This tiered structure means that when you are dealt three aces, the value of holding a low kicker alongside them changes dramatically compared to a game like Jacks or Better.
What the Pay Table Changes
The single most important number on the screen is the payout for a full house and a flush. On what players call a full-pay version of Triple Double Bonus, a full house pays nine coins for each coin bet and a flush pays seven. Other machines reduce one or both of those numbers, often to eight and six, or eight and five. Those reductions do not look large on the screen, but they change the long-run return of the game and they change specific hold decisions.
When a full house pays nine and a flush pays seven, certain borderline hands are played one way. When those payouts drop, the same hands are played differently. The pay table is not a cosmetic feature. It is the rule set, and any strategy chart you consult must match the exact pay table on the machine in front of you. A chart built for a nine-seven pay table will give you wrong advice on an eight-five machine, and the cost of those wrong decisions accumulates over every hand you play.
Decision Points That Trip Up New Players
The first mistake new players make is treating Triple Double Bonus like Jacks or Better. The games look similar, but the bonus payouts for four of a kind pull the strategy in a different direction. In Jacks or Better, a low pair is usually held over a single high card. In Triple Double Bonus, the inflated value of four aces and four low cards means you sometimes break up a low pair to chase a higher-value draw. The exact decision depends on the pay table, but the general principle holds: this game rewards aggressive draws toward its bonus hands.
The second mistake is ignoring the kicker. When you are dealt three aces, the decision to hold a two, three, or four alongside them is not automatic. Holding the kicker reduces your chance of drawing the fourth ace, because you have used one of your draw cards to hold the kicker. But if you do draw the fourth ace, the kicker multiplies the payout. The correct play depends on the pay table and the specific cards in your hand. Guessing at this decision costs money over time.
The third mistake is playing fewer than five coins. The royal flush payout on nearly every video poker machine jumps disproportionately at the five-coin bet. At one through four coins, a royal flush pays a flat multiple of your bet. At five coins, it typically pays a much larger amount. Playing fewer than five coins means you are accepting a lower long-run return on the game's largest payout. If the five-coin stake is outside your comfort range, the standard advice is to move down in denomination rather than play fewer coins.
Comparing the Main Bet Categories
The pay table is a menu of bets, and each line on it carries a different probability and a different contribution to the game's overall return. The table below lays out how the main hand categories differ in what they pay and how often they appear.
| Hand category | What it pays | How often it appears | What it means for strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jacks or better | Lowest paying win, usually even money | Most common winning hand | Keeps the game moving; rarely worth chasing |
| Two pair | Modest payout, usually even money or slightly more | Common | Seldom changes hold decisions |
| Three of a kind | Small payout above even money | Moderately common | Often held, but kicker decisions matter for aces and low cards |
| Straight and flush | Mid-tier payouts, usually four to seven coins per coin bet | Less common | Pay table reductions here change borderline draws |
| Full house | Mid-tier payout, nine coins on full-pay versions | Less common than straights or flushes | One of the two payouts that defines the pay table |
| Four of a kind | Highly tiered, from modest to very large | Rare | The game's defining feature; drives aggressive draw decisions |
| Straight flush | Large payout | Very rare | Worth holding four to a straight flush over most other draws |
| Royal flush | Largest payout, disproportionately higher at five coins | Rarest hand | Always play five coins to qualify for the full payout |
Why Strategy Charts Are Rule-Specific
A published strategy chart for Triple Double Bonus is a list of hold decisions ordered by expected value. It tells you, for every possible five-card deal, which cards to keep. But the chart is only correct for the pay table it was built from. The game's bonus structure means that small changes in the full house or flush payout shift the ranking of several borderline hands. A chart that says to hold three to a royal flush over four to a flush on one pay table might say the opposite on another.
This is not a quirk of Triple Double Bonus. Every video poker variant has the same property: the strategy derives from the exact rule set in use, including the deck count, the pay table, and the presence or absence of wild cards. When you find a strategy chart, check which pay table it assumes. If the chart does not state its pay table, it is incomplete. The machine in front of you is the only authoritative source for the payouts you are playing against.
What You Control and What You Do Not
The machine's random number generator determines the cards. You cannot influence it, and no pattern of holds, bet sizes, or timing changes the underlying probabilities. What you control is the hold decision on every hand, the number of coins you bet, the denomination you choose, and how long you play. Those choices determine your expected loss per hour, not whether you win on any given session.
Return to Player, or RTP, is a theoretical percentage of total wagered money a game returns to players over a very large number of spins or hands. It is a long-run statistical average, not a per-session guarantee. The house edge is the mathematical advantage the operator holds on a given game, expressed as a percentage of each wager. House edge and RTP are complements: they sum to 100% for the same game. A machine with a higher RTP returns more to players on average over a very large number of hands, but any single session can end far above or far below that average. Volatility, which describes how payouts are distributed over time, does not change a game's RTP. Triple Double Bonus is a high-volatility game relative to many other video poker variants, because so much of its return is concentrated in rare four-of-a-kind hands. That means longer dry spells between significant wins, and it means bankroll sizing matters more than it would on a lower-volatility game.
FAQ
What is the difference between Triple Double Bonus and Double Bonus Poker?
Both games pay bonuses for certain four-of-a-kind hands, but Triple Double Bonus adds a third tier of payouts tied to aces and low cards with specific kickers. The tiered structure makes the draw decisions more aggressive toward those bonus hands, and the pay table for full houses and flushes is typically lower to compensate for the larger four-of-a-kind payouts.
Should I always hold a kicker with three aces?
Not always. Holding a kicker reduces your chance of drawing the fourth ace because you are using one draw card to keep the kicker. The correct play depends on the exact pay table and the other cards in your hand. A strategy chart built for the specific pay table on the machine gives the right answer for each situation.
Why does the royal flush payout matter so much?
The royal flush is the rarest hand in the game, but its payout at the five-coin bet is disproportionately larger than at one through four coins. Because the royal flush contributes a meaningful share of the game's long-run return, playing fewer than five coins lowers the expected return of the entire game, not just the royal flush line.
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