How the Bonus Bet Works
On traditional versions of the game the bonus was often a $1 wager placed in a separate circle before the cards were dealt. Once everybody had made a decision, the dealer activated the bonus positions and collected the wagers. From that point on there was nothing else for the player to decide — the bonus bet simply waited for the final five-card hand.
Make a sufficiently strong poker hand and the bonus pays in addition to anything you win from the regular Let It Ride wagers. Miss the required hand and the bonus dollar disappears. It sounds harmless. It is only one dollar, after all. That is exactly why so many players make it.
The bonus is completely separate from your three normal Let It Ride wagers. Suppose you are playing ① $5, ② $5 and $ $5. You may also have the option of placing a BONUS $1. The main bets follow the normal rules: you may pull back Bet 1, you may pull back Bet 2, and the $ wager remains in play. The bonus is different. Once it has been placed there are no further decisions — your final five-card hand either qualifies for a bonus payout or it does not.
Normally the bonus begins paying at a much stronger hand than the regular game. A pair of tens may win the main game; it will not win the traditional bonus wager. Depending on the schedule in front of you, the minimum qualifying hand is usually three of a kind or better — and on some schedules, including the example table further down this page, nothing below a flush pays anything at all.
The bonus is settled entirely by the strength of your final five cards. No decision you make during the hand can improve it, protect it or take it back.
The Main Bets and the Bonus Are Different Wagers
They sit on the same layout and they are settled from the same five cards, but they behave nothing alike.
The three main bets
Two decisions. Bet 1 may be pulled back after three cards, Bet 2 after the first community card.
Strategy applies. Correct play removes money when the cards do not justify leaving it in action.
Pays from a pair of tens. Modest hands still return something.
Compulsory to play the game, and the place where your actual decisions belong.
The bonus bet
No decisions. It is placed before the deal and then simply waits.
No strategy. Nothing later in the hand can rescue a bad bonus wager.
Pays only from a strong hand. Everything below the qualifying hand returns nothing.
Optional, independent of the three main bets, and judged entirely on its own pay table.
A Typical Bonus Payout Schedule
Different casinos and different versions of Let It Ride have used different bonus schedules. The table below is a traditional example, shown for a $1 bonus wager.
| Hand | Example | Bonus payout |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Flush | $20,000 | |
| Straight Flush | $2,000 | |
| Four of a Kind | $400 | |
| Full House | $200 | |
| Flush | $50 | |
| Anything Lower | $0 |
Example traditional schedule. Actual payouts vary by casino and game version.
The minimum qualifying hand differs from one schedule to another. On this particular table the payouts begin at a flush, so the three of a kind shown in the bottom row returns nothing at all — while other schedules do pay from three of a kind upwards. That single difference changes the whole wager, which is why the printed table in front of you matters more than any general rule.
These figures should be treated as an example, not as a universal Let It Ride pay table. Always check the actual schedule printed at the table.
The size of the payouts is what makes the wager attractive — a single dollar suddenly has a chance of turning into hundreds or even thousands. But a large top prize does not automatically make a wager good. The other side of the calculation is how rarely those hands appear.
One Dollar, Twenty Thousand Dollars
This is the hand every bonus player is picturing: five spades in sequence, and a single dollar chip that turns into the biggest payout on the board.
On the example schedule above — other tables pay a different amount for the same hand.
Large top prizes do not tell you the overall return of the wager.
Tip 4: The Bonus Bet Is Usually Expensive
Tip 4
The bonus is usually much more expensive than the main game.
Check the actual pay table before deciding whether to play it.
From a strategy point of view the easiest advice is also the least exciting: skip the bonus. The traditional Let It Ride bonus has often carried a much larger house advantage than the main game, and some pay schedules have been particularly poor.
That creates an odd situation. Imagine you are playing three $5 main wagers plus a $1 bonus. The bonus looks insignificant beside the $15 sitting in the normal betting circles. But percentage-wise, the casino may have a much greater advantage over that little side wager than it has over the much larger amount involved in the main game.
That is why judging a bet purely by its size can be misleading. One dollar does not sound dangerous; repeated hundreds of times at a large house advantage, it becomes expensive.
Why Players Still Love It
None of this stops people from playing it. Sit at a Let It Ride table long enough and you will probably see bonus wagers in front of most of the players. There is an obvious reason: the bonus produces the memorable wins. Nobody talks about the hundreds of $1 chips that quietly disappeared. They remember the player who hit four of a kind and collected hundreds. They remember the full house. They certainly remember the rare royal flush.
Swipe the strip sideways to see all twelve hands.
What players remember
What actually happened
This is an illustration of how the arithmetic accumulates, not a claim about how often a flush appears. A flush is far rarer than one hand in twelve; the winning circle is drawn inside the visible slice only so that it can be seen, and in these figures it is the single flush of the entire 120-hand session.
That creates an interesting psychological effect. Suppose you refuse the bonus and then hit three of a kind at a table whose schedule pays that hand. Someone beside you may immediately tell you how much extra money you would have won if you had placed the side bet. It feels like you lost money. You did not — you simply did not make a separate wager. The missing payout is easy to notice because the winning hand is sitting directly in front of you. The dozens of bonus wagers you would have lost before hitting it are much easier to forget.
The “I Would Have Won” Problem
This happens with side bets throughout casino games. A player skips a wager, the exact result needed for that wager then appears, and suddenly it feels as though the player made a mistake. But the quality of a wager is not determined by one result. It is determined by what happens over a large number of hands.
How it feels
“You should have played the bonus.”
Three of a kind, at a table whose schedule pays that hand. The winning cards are face up on the layout, the payout that was not collected is easy to picture, and the moment feels like a mistake. It is the one result anybody at the table will remember.
What the arithmetic says
One result does not settle the question — a long run of hands does.
Imagine playing 200 hands. If the bonus loses again and again before finally producing one exciting payout, you need to count all of those losing wagers as well. You cannot count the winning hand and pretend the earlier losses never happened.
That is the problem with saying “I should have played it.” You only know that after seeing the cards. Before the deal, you had to make the decision without knowing what was coming.
A Simple Way to See What the Bonus Costs
If you insist on playing the bonus, there is an easy experiment. Begin the session with two separate piles of chips: one for your normal Let It Ride play, the other only for the bonus. Never move money between them during the experiment. Every bonus wager comes from the bonus pile and every bonus win goes back into it.
An experiment you can run at the table
The rule of the experiment: never move money between the two trays while it is running.
Compare the stacks after the session. The amounts above are only an example — use whatever two starting piles suit the stakes you play.
After a reasonable number of hands, compare the two stacks. This makes it much harder to ignore the accumulated cost of the side wager. The occasional large win remains visible, and so do all the dollars that went into producing it. It is a far better way of judging the bet than remembering only the times it hit.
Why Is the Bonus Wager So Small?
Traditional Let It Ride tables commonly restricted the bonus to a very small wager, and that is probably fortunate for players. Side bets tend to combine two characteristics: large advertised payouts and large casino advantages. The small stake limits how quickly that disadvantage can become expensive.
Of course, modern variations can use different wager amounts and different payout structures. Never assume that the bonus at one casino is identical to the one you saw somewhere else. Read the pay table first.
Not Every Bonus Pay Table Is Equal
There is no single house edge for every Let It Ride bonus bet. Change the payout for a royal flush and the return changes. Change the straight-flush payout and it changes again. Add another qualifying hand and the mathematics changes again.
Pay table A
Pays from a flush upwards.
Pay table B
Same hands, different amounts.
Pay table C
An extra qualifying hand at the bottom.
Changing even one payout changes the return.
The three panels above are deliberately abstract. They are here to show that schedules differ in their amounts and in which hands qualify at all — not to quote the payouts of any particular casino.
Older bonus schedules have been calculated with house advantages ranging from the low teens to well above 30 per cent. Some unusual schedules have been considerably better, with reported figures below 5 per cent. That is a huge difference.
Reported house advantages on historical bonus schedules
No marker is shown on this scale on purpose. Saying “the Let It Ride bonus has a 25 per cent house edge” is too broad — a particular schedule may be around that level, another may be better, another may be considerably worse. You need the exact pay table before you can calculate the exact return, and this page does not claim that any specific table sits at any specific point on the scale.
Compare the Bonus With the Main Game
This is the part that matters most. The main Let It Ride game gives you decisions: you can pull back Bet 1, you can pull back Bet 2, and correct strategy allows you to remove money when the cards do not justify leaving it in action.
The bonus does not give you that opportunity. You place it before seeing your cards and then wait. There is no strategy decision that can rescue a bad bonus wager.
The main game2 decisions
- 1 Place bets
- 2 3 cards dealt
- 3 Decision ①
- 4 Decision ②
- 5 Payout
The bonus bet0 decisions
- 1 Place the bonus
- 2 3 cards dealt
- 3 No decision
- 4 No decision
- 5 Payout
You cannot pull the bonus back after receiving 2♣ 6♦ 9♥, and you cannot increase it after receiving Q♠ K♠ A♠. The decision was made before the cards appeared.
That makes the pay table itself the most important part of bonus strategy. If the mathematics of the table is poor, there is nothing you can do later in the hand to improve it.
Playing for Entertainment
There is still a difference between saying a wager has poor mathematical value and saying nobody should ever make it. Some players enjoy side bets. They like putting a small amount of money at risk for the chance of hitting a very large payout. That is entertainment.
Playing for value
- The question is which wager returns the most over many hands.
- The three main bets carry the smaller house advantage and the real decisions.
- On this measure the usual answer is to leave the bonus circle empty.
Playing for entertainment
- The question is what you enjoy putting a small stake on.
- You are usually paying extra house edge in exchange for more volatile payouts.
- What you are buying is the possibility of a memorable hit.
Know which reason you are playing for.
If entertainment is why you are playing it, understand what you are buying. There is nothing mysterious about it. But do not confuse an entertaining wager with the best mathematical wager — those are two different questions.
The Basic Bonus Strategy
There is not much to memorise. Before playing the bonus: check the exact payout schedule; do not assume that a large royal-flush prize makes the entire wager attractive; remember that the bonus is independent of your normal three bets; and judge its results across many hands rather than by the one time you would have hit it.
If your goal is to play Let It Ride with the strongest mathematical approach, the usual answer is simple. Leave the bonus circle empty. The three main wagers are where your actual strategy decisions belong.
Bonus bet reference card
- 1Read the exact payout schedule printed at the table before the chips go down. It is the only thing that decides what the wager is worth.
- 2Check the minimum qualifying hand. Some schedules pay from three of a kind; others, like the example on this page, pay nothing below a flush.
- 3Do not judge the bet by the top prize. A large royal-flush payout tells you nothing about the overall return.
- 4Remember there are no decisions. The bonus is independent of your three main bets and cannot be pulled back or increased.
- 5Keep the bonus stake in its own pile so the accumulated cost stays visible instead of disappearing into the main stack.
- 6Judge it across many hands, not by the one hand you would have hit.
Playing strict basic strategy? Skip the bonus.Leave the bonus circle empty — the three main wagers are where your strategy decisions belong.