ULTIMATE FOUR OF A KIND JACKS OR BETTER STRATEGY

The next series of bonus games we’ll cover is the ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind’. This is another in the hugely popular ‘extra bet‘ bonus games or as I like to call them ‘Bonus 2.0’. The commonality with these games is that you must bet an additional amount—in some cases an extra coin, in other cases an entire extra bet—to activate the bonus feature.

Most people figure this out on their own but don’t play these games if you’re not going to activate the bonus feature. If you’re going to play a normal ‘Jacks or Better‘ game find a different machine. You can get a lot better return at any number of other games.

‘Ultimate Four of a Kind‘ is usually found in the same multigame format as ‘Ultimate Aces‘. Like ‘Ultimate Aces‘ these machines offer a number of very common rulesets with the ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind‘ bonus added. In most Deuces Wild variations. We’ll cover each of the games individually since they each have a unique paytable and in some cases their own dedicated strategy decisions.

ULTIMATE FOUR OF A KIND RULES

The ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind’ series has slightly different rules from game to game. On the ‘Jacks or Better‘ game we’ll cover today there’s only one hand that activates the bonus feature. On some of the ‘Bonus Poker‘ games, there are multiple hands. For the most part, the game plays like a normal version of the specific ruleset. When a player makes the bonus hand on the draw (usually 4 of a Kind) he activates the bonus feature.

When the bonus feature is activated, the player picks cards face down from a 53 card deck (Joker added). Since the majority of the ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind‘ machines in use are three hand games the player is awarded picks for each qualifying hand. On this game, four Aces earns three picks, four 2, 3 or 4 earn two picks with every other value card earning one pick. We’ll provide the pick format for each individual version of ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind’.

The cards the player selects are revealed and based on their value a bonus of varying amounts are paid. This also varies slightly from one variation to another.

BONUS CARD PAYS

• JOKER 4000
• ACE 400
• 2-4 260
• 5-K 200

Since the ‘Joker‘ pays the same 4000 coins as a Royal Flush these bonuses can add up quickly. With expert play, the ‘Ultimate Four of a Kind Jacks or Better‘ returns 97.9%. The strategy is the same as on a ‘regular‘ JoB machine:

ULTIMATE FOUR OF A KIND JACKS OR BETTER STRATEGY

• Royal Flush
• Straight Flush
• Four of a Kind
• Full House
• Flush
• Straight
• Three of a Kind
• 4 to a straight flush
• Two Pair
• Pair of Jacks or Better
• 3 to a Royal Flush (eg: 10 K A of Diamonds)
• 4 to a flush
• low pair (2 through 10)
• 4 to an outside straights
• two suited high cards (J Q K A)
• 3 to a straight flush
• 2 unsuited high cards (J Q K A)
• Suited 10/J J/Q or Q/K
• One high card
• Discard everything

The single hand variation of the game offers a couple of unique twists—if a player gets a Four of a Kind on the deal he gets an extra pick. Also, if he draws a joker in the bonus round it comes to an end no matter how many ‘picks’ he has remaining.