Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker is a game based largely on hold'em poker, the single most popular type of poker available over the past decade and a half. This game is largely based on having to make strategic decisions considering your chances against a random hold'em hand held by the dealer. This is a fun game with multiple strategic decisions that have to be made, and it's fairly easy to learn to play. With proper strategy, this game has a low house advantage of just over 2%, and that makes it comparable to games like European roulette and Baccarat played by a skillful player.
How Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker Gameplay Works
• Make an ante wager
• You and the dealer are dealt two cards face-down
o You can look at your own two cards.
• Decide if you want to make a flop bet
o This will be twice the size of the ante.
• If you don't want to make a flop bet, then you can fold
o Meaning you give up your ante and any chances of winning
• After the flop bet is decided, the flop (middle of the table) is dealt with three community cards face-up
o This is just like in regular hold'em poker.
• Now you can choose to check (not do or bet anything) and see the next card (turn) for free, or you can make a turn bet that's the same size as the ante.
• Once the turn is dealt, you get the same thing again where you can check to see the (next card) river, or you can make a river bet before seeing the final card that's also the same size as the ante.
• When the final card is dealt, the dealer turns over his hand, and your hands are compared.
The one with the best five-card poker hand wins. Losing the hand loses all of your bets. If you win, then your flop, turn and river bets pay 1:1. The ante bet will only pay if you have a straight or flush and up, just depending on the exact rules of the game you're playing. While this is the source of the house advantage, it also gives you chances to win bigger payouts with extra pays in some games.
The Bonus Bets
Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker also has a bonus side bet that you can take part in. Different games will have slightly different rules for this bet, but the basic idea is that different configurations of the hole cards can give you bonus wins. Both the player and dealer having AA is usually the highest-paying win on the bonus bet, and it usually pays 1,000:1.
The bonus bet typically has a house advantage of somewhere between 8 and 9%. In other words, it's a trap bet that you should never play because this house edge is much higher than just playing the game normally.
Strategy for Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker
Once you're dealt the hole cards, you have to decide between just folding or making the flop bet that's worth twice the size of the ante. You should make this bet an overwhelming percentage of the time.
“you should really only fold if you have 3&2, 4&2, 5&2, 6&2 or 7&2 where your cards aren't the same suit”
This is very anti-intuitive, especially for players who are familiar with hold'em where you'd fold a majority of the time at this stage of the game. In Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker, however, the biggest mistake is folding too often.
When you get to the turn and river bets, strategy is based around a simple principle: If you have more than a 50% chance of winning against the randomly-dealt dealer hand, then you should take the bet. If you don't, then you should just check. While that sounds simple, being able to accurately predict your chances of winning against a random hand is extremely difficult unless you're an exceptionally-seasoned hold'em poker.
With that having been said, there's a simple tool that can help you with the last two bets. A free program called PokerStove is used to evaluate the chances of winning against the dealer if you put in your hole cards, add in the post-flop cards and set the dealer's hand to be random. You can use this to train yourself while studying, or you can use it in online games to help yourself make the right decisions.
Overview
Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker is a solid game that's one of the few casino poker games that includes multiple strategic decisions in the same hand. However, more strategic options means more opportunities to go wrong. If you don't follow the proper strategies with this game, especially with the initial bet where you have to play the vast majority of hands to play correctly, then your payout rate will suffer tremendously.
