Video Poker Strategy
Triple Double Bonus stacks THREE separate bonus layers on top of Jacks or Better: a rank tier for quads (aces / 2s-4s / 5s-Ks), and then a kicker bonus on top of the two lowest tiers that pays as much as a royal flush. The trade-off funding all of that is a much smaller payout for three of a kind (2 instead of 3), which is why this game is dramatically more volatile than Jacks or Better despite a similar overall return. Perfect play returns 99.5778%, computed exactly by our engine and matching the accepted published figure to four decimal places.
| Hand | Pays (per coin) |
|---|---|
| Royal Flush | 800 |
| Straight Flush | 50 |
| Four Aces + 2,3,4 kicker | 800 |
| Four 2s-4s + A,2,3,4 kicker | 400 |
| Four Aces (no bonus kicker) | 160 |
| Four 2s-4s (no bonus kicker) | 80 |
| Four 5s-Ks | 50 |
| Full House | 9 |
| Flush | 7 |
| Straight | 4 |
| Three of a Kind | 2 |
| Two Pair | 1 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 |
The headline hand is four aces (or 2s-4s) with the right kicker: it pays exactly like a royal flush (800 for aces, 400 for 2s-4s). That single fact reshapes strategy around three-of-a-kind hands in the ace/2/3/4 range — you sometimes break a made three of a kind to chase the specific kicker, the same "kicker discipline" that makes Double Double Bonus famous, just with bigger numbers attached. See Double Double Bonus's strategy page for the exact kicker-holding rule, which applies here too.
Hold the highest-ranked pattern your hand matches. Every EV below is engine-exact for the specific example hand shown; the vs 9/6 JoB column shows whether this pattern's rank moved compared to the Jacks or Better baseline, which tells you exactly where this pay table's incentives genuinely diverge. A few hands near a boundary can shift slightly with the exact ranks involved, so check the hand analyzer for anything unusual.
| # | Hold this pattern | Example | EV/coin | vs 9/6 JoB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Four of a kind (pat) | 2c 7c 7d 7h 7s | 50.0000 | up from #2 |
| 2 | Straight flush (pat) | 6c 7c 8c 9c 10c | 50.0000 | down from #1 |
| 3 | Four to a royal flush | 10c Jc Qc Kc 2d | 19.8298 | unchanged (#3) |
| 4 | Full house (pat) | 4c 9c 4d 9d 9h | 9.0000 | unchanged (#4) |
| 5 | Flush (pat) | 2h 6h 9h Jh Kh | 7.0000 | unchanged (#5) |
| 6 | Three of a kind | 3c 8c 8d Kd 8h | 4.4699 | unchanged (#6) |
| 7 | Straight (pat) | 5c 8c 6d 9d 7h | 4.0000 | unchanged (#7) |
| 8 | Four to a straight flush | 6c 7c 8c 9c 2d | 3.6809 | unchanged (#8) |
| 9 | Two pair | 4c Jc 9d Jd 4h | 1.6809 | unchanged (#9) |
| 10 | Three to a royal flush | 10c Jc Qc 7d 4h | 1.5347 | up from #11 |
| 11 | Four to a flush | 4c 2h 6h 9h Jh | 1.4043 | up from #12 |
| 12 | High pair (jacks or better) | 7c Jc 9d Jd 4h | 1.3317 | down from #10 |
| 13 | Four to an open-ended straight | 5c 8c 2d 6d 7h | 0.6809 | up from #14 |
| 14 | Three to a straight flush, no gap | 6c 7c 8c Kd 2h | 0.6383 | up from #15 |
| 15 | Low pair | 6c Kc 3d 6d 9h | 0.6189 | down from #13 |
| 16 | Two suited high cards | Qc Kc 7d 4h 3s | 0.5582 | unchanged (#16) |
| 17 | Four to an inside straight, 3 high cards | 3c Kc Qd Jh 9s | 0.5319 | unchanged (#17) |
| 18 | Suited ten/high card (e.g. JT suited) | 10c Jc 7d 4h 3s | 0.4632 | unchanged (#18) |
| 19 | Two unsuited high cards | Kc 7d Qd 4h 3s | 0.4360 | unchanged (#19) |
| 20 | One lone high card | 3c Kc 2d 6d 9h | 0.4081 | unchanged (#20) |
| 21 | Four to an inside straight, fewer than 3 high cards | 5c 9c 2d 8d 7h | 0.3404 | up from #22 |
| 22 | Garbage (discard all five) | 2c 5d 6d 9h 3s | 0.3404 | down from #21 |
The pay table was checked against the accepted published return using the same exact inclusion-exclusion engine behind the return calculator, matching to four decimal places. Every row in the chart above is evaluated by the same engine behind every strategy page and the hand analyzer: for each of the 32 possible holds, it enumerates every real draw from the remaining cards and computes the exact expected value, then reports the best. See the methodology page for the full explanation.
The trainer deals real hands for this exact pay table and grades every hold against this engine.
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