Bonus Six Game Review

The hybrid table game known as Bonus Six was designed and trademarked in the late 1990s by Tom Perkins and Thomas Sawyer, who worked together as part of the casino game design firm Ten Stix, Inc.

Among the other table games created and marketed by Ten Stix around this time were Ten to Win, Shotgun 21, Push Your Luck, and Hold’em 88.

By 2002 the five-card stud variant Bonus Six, which is also referred to by the names Bonus 6 and Bonus 6 Stud Poker, was approved for play in California, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Of these six states, however, the game appears to have caught on most prominently in Colorado, where Bonus Six became a regular offering on the table games menu at casinos found in the regional gambling mecca of Black Hawk.

Bonus Six Game Elements

Bonus Six shares a similar name to an aspect of Three Card Poker known as the 6 Card Bonus, but other than the terminology, these two games have nothing to do with one another.

Bonus Six incorporates elements of classic five-card stud poker and modern table games like Let It Ride. By pitting players against a pay table – rather than one another or the dealer – Bonus Six is premised on the poker construct of forming the best possible five-card hand.

With up to two (and sometimes three) crucial decision points for the player occurring with each hand, Bonus Six adds the element of skill, which can often be lacking in new table game designs. Deciding whether or not to continue with the hand, or fold and fight another day, forms the game’s foundation, and players with a savvy card sense can give themselves an edge.

If you’ve recently discovered Bonus Six being played in your local casino, and you’d like to learn more before buying in, this page is the place for you. Here you’ll find a breakdown of the gameplay structure and rules, followed by a guide to locating Bonus Six tables, along with a handy introduction to the proper strategy needed to play correctly.

Rules and How to Play

Bonus Six is played using the standard table games format, which means players sit on one side of a semi-circular table, while a dealer runs the game from behind the table.

The game uses a standard 52-card deck of playing cards, and the single deck is reshuffled at the conclusion of each hand.

The objective of Bonus Six is to form the best possible five-card poker hand, according to the traditional poker hand hierarchy. An escalating pay table is used to award payouts to winning hands, and a detailed breakdown of the Bonus Six pay table will be included below.

For one pair hands, the minimum requirement to qualify for a payout is a pair of 6s or better, similar to the Jacks or Better construction of the popular video poker format.

Payouts begin at even money for making one pair (of 6s or better) and escalate accordingly as the hands progress. Two pair pays out at 2 to 1, three of a kind pays out at 3 to 1, a straight 4 to 1, and a flush 6 to 1. From there, the payouts jump significantly, rising to 20 to 1 for making a full house, 50 to 1 for landing four of a kind, 100 to 1 for a straight flush, and 1,000 to 1 for the mother of all poker hands: the royal flush.

Remember one thing about Bonus Six payouts, though: the payout odds listed above don’t apply to the insurance payment or the last bet needed to purchase a fifth hole card. These chips are simply claimed by the house, and your payouts on winning hands will be based only on the original ante bet and the subsequent two bets.

As an example of the payout process in action, let’s assume an ante bet of $10 has been placed, and the insurance has been purchased for $5 more. The player then proceeds to make both of the additional bets for $10 each, before purchasing a fifth hole card for another $10. At this point, the player has wagered $45 total ($10 ante + $5 insurance + $10 bet + $10 bet + $10 for fifth hole card = $45).

Let’s assume the community card is the 10 of diamonds, and the player holds the following hole cards: 7d-8s-9c-Jh-2d. With these five hole cards, the player’s best possible five card poker hand is the 7-8-9-10-J straight, good for a 4 to 1 payout.

The house immediately claims the insurance payment ($5) and the fifth hole card payment ($10), leaving $30 in wagers on the table. At 4 to 1 odds, the dealer will pay the player $120 in chips. So all told, the player wagered $45 total to win $120 for a profit margin of $75.

Best Places to Play Bonus Six

In 1991 the state of Colorado legalized gambling within jurisdictions other than tribal reservations, partly to preserve historical communities like Black Hawk, Central City, and Cripple Creek which were on the verge of becoming ghost towns.

Today, Black Hawk has emerged as the undisputed leader among Colorado’s state-authorized casino destinations, and visitors have access to more than a dozen individual properties. The game of Bonus Six (or Bonus 6) has become quite common throughout the town of Black Hawk, so it’s very likely that you’ll find the game at one of the 17 local casinos listed below. For the sake of clarity, however, we’ve bolded the three casino properties in Black Hawk which are known to currently run Bonus Six tables.

Aside from Black Hawk, Colorado, sightings, and reports of Bonus Six games in the other five states where it has been authorized for play have been few and far between. It’s highly likely that Bonus Six simply failed to catch on in the casinos and card rooms of California and Nevada, with dozens of alternative table game options competing for a limited amount of floor space.

When it comes to online poker sites, Bonus Six hasn’t yet been adapted for play over the internet. This may be due to ownership issues over the game concept, or simply a lack of demand for this particular table game entry by online casino players.

The El Dorado Casino online gambling platform does offer a video poker format known as Bonus Six Poker, but this game plays out like traditional video poker and bears little to no resemblance to the Bonus Six game described on this page.

Strategic Considerations for Bonus Six

When it comes to thinking strategically about casino table games, the first place to begin is by assessing the house edge. This percentage represents the theoretical hold expected by the house or the average amount of dollars a casino can expect to win given $100 of hypothetical wagers.

Put another way, for every $100 a player decides to wager on a particular casino game, the house edge percentage indicates the amount of money that player will lose over the infinite long run.

The best game in the house is blackjack, which carries a house edge of just 1.5 percent for players applying no strategy, and an extremely low 0.50 percent when basic strategy guidelines are used. Other bets in the casino which offer favorable house edges include the banker bet in baccarat (1.06 percent), the pass line bet on craps (1.41 percent), and single-zero roulette wheels (2.70 percent).

For the game of Bonus Six, the house edge stands at a staggering 10.42 percent – making it a worse wager than so-called “sucker” bets like the $1 bet on the Big Six wheel (11.11 percent), hard rolls in craps (between 9.09 and 11.11 percent), and side bets on most table games.

And that’s assuming players haven’t paid for the insurance policy. When the insurance has been taken, the house edge on Bonus Six jumps to an astounding 23.83 percent, making the game worse than anything on the casino floor other than keno.

With these numbers in mind, the first and most important strategic concern to keep in mind about Bonus Six is to never pay for the insurance policy. Doing so immediately increases the house edge against you by more than double, while also making Bonus Six one of the most disadvantageous games in any casino.

Players will always find their way to unfavorable games, though, and after all, the temptation to pursue a big gamble is what the casino gambling industry has been built upon. So with that in mind, if you’re intent on trying your hand at Bonus Six sometime in the future, the following strategic guidelines devised by Michael Shackleford of Wizard of Odds fame should serve you well:

With a house edge of over 10 percent under optimal conditions, Bonus Six simply isn’t worth investing any serious time or money into. Literally every other game in the house gives you a better chance to win, even the most obscure hybrid table games. Playing any casino game with a house edge this high is a recipe for bankroll disaster, and unless you’re playing with money you can absolutely afford to lose, Bonus Six is a “sucker” game to be avoided at all costs.