The Five Card Bonus
The one wager in Criss Cross Poker where nothing you do changes the result. Here is what it pays, how often it pays, and whether it is worth the chip.
Bonus Hole cards
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What the Five Card Bonus Actually Is
The Five Card Bonus is an optional side bet posted before the deal, alongside your two antes. It is graded on the five community cards alone: three across, three down, sharing the centre card, which is exactly five cards.
Your hole cards play no part in it. In the layout above the community five are ace high with no pair, so the bonus loses, even though your K♠ Q♠ complete a royal flush across the horizontal middle row and pay a fortune on the Across bet. The two are scored separately and never look at each other.
It settles whatever else you did.
Fold Across, fold Down, skip the Middle bet: the bonus is unaffected. It is the only wager that can still be paid on a hand where you folded both lines.
That independence is the point. Every other bet responds to judgement: when to raise the maximum, when to fold a line, whether to post the Middle bet. The Five Card Bonus is the one wager in the game where no decision you make changes the outcome. The result was fixed by the shuffle.
The Pay Table
Every payout is expressed against your bonus wager alone, so a $5 bonus on a flush returns $50 plus your stake back, whatever the rest of the hand did.
This is the detail people most often get wrong. The main pay table governing Across, Down and Middle separates a high pair (jacks, queens, kings or aces) from a low pair and pays them differently. The bonus draws its line somewhere else: sixes and up win, fives and down lose. Below a pair of 6s there is no consolation: ace-high, king-high, a pair of deuces all lose outright.
How Often Each Hand Actually Turns Up
Here the maths is unusually clean. The community five are drawn from one standard 52-card deck with no selection, no discard and no decision applied to them. They are simply five random cards, so the standard five-card poker probabilities apply exactly.
That table splits high pairs from low pairs because the main game does. The bonus does not, so read the two pair rows as one line: a pair of 6s or better comes up 29.25% of the time (337,920 high-pair hands plus 422,400 low-pair hands out of 2,598,960). For the bonus those are the same winning result, both paid at 1 to 1. Together they are where most of the bet’s return comes from.
What appears most often?
Out of all 2,598,960 five-card combinations
Read those figures next to the pay table and the shape of the bet is obvious. The headline rows, royal flush at 250 to 1 and straight flush at 100 to 1, barely move the long-run return. They land so rarely that most players will sit at a table for years without seeing one on the community cards.
Almost all the money comes back through the bottom of the table: a pair of 6s or better at 1 to 1, two pair at 3 to 1, three of a kind at 4 to 1. Those rows do the work, and they are why the bet is not as expensive as its top prize suggests.
Roughly half of all five-card hands do not make a pair at all, and more make only a pair of 5s or lower. Losing the bonus is the ordinary outcome, not bad luck.
Is It Worth Taking?
Multiply every payout by its probability across all 2,598,960 five-card combinations and the bonus returns an expected −0.0353 units per unit wagered, a house edge of 3.53%. Set against this game’s own numbers that reads well enough: it sits below the 4.33% charged against the ante, though above the 1.48% element of risk. The difference is not the size of the figure but its rigidity. It is still a house edge, and it is the one number here that nothing you do changes. That is the part that matters:
Five Card Bonus
3.53% house edge, fixed. No decision in the game moves it up or down, because there is no decision to make after the chip is down.
Main game vs the ante
4.33% against the ante. Higher on paper, but that is the number for playing well. Play badly and it is far worse.
Element of risk
1.48% measured against everything you actually put on the felt. The honest cost of the main game, and it rewards study.
So the comparison is not simply 3.53% against 4.33%. The main game’s figures are the reward for playing it properly. Get the three decisions right and your cost falls to a 1.48% element of risk. Those numbers respond to you. The bonus’s 3.53% responds to nothing: no reading of the community cards, no betting pattern, no tracking of any kind improves it.
The Five Card Bonus is a cheap way to buy some variance and a shot at 250 to 1 while you play the game you came for. It is not a value bet and not a hedge. If you enjoy having it out, that is defensible; if you are trying to make your money last, it is the first chip to leave in the rack.
The practical version
Bet it small and bet it consistently, or do not bet it at all: no amount of play improves the price. The decisions that do respond to skill are here.
Five Card Bonus Questions
Does the Five Card Bonus use my hole cards?
No. It is scored on the five community cards on their own. Your hole cards are irrelevant to it. You can hold a pair of aces and still lose the bonus, or hold nothing and win it.
Does it still pay if I fold?
Yes. The bonus is completely independent of the Across, Down and Middle wagers. You can fold both lines, forfeit both antes and still be paid if the community five make a pair of 6s or better.
Is the Five Card Bonus worth taking?
Strictly on the maths, no: it carries a 3.53% house edge and there is no way to play it better. Against this game’s own figures it is not an outrageous price: below the 4.33% charged on the ante, above the 1.48% element of risk. What separates it is that no decision you make moves it. Keep the stake small if you want it out, but it remains a losing bet in the long run.
What is the top payout?
A royal flush in the five community cards pays 250 to 1. A straight flush pays 100 to 1 and four of a kind pays 40 to 1. All three are rare enough to contribute very little to the bet’s overall return. Most of what comes back arrives through pairs, two pair and trips.
Criss Cross Poker is a table game from AGS, developed by Ron LaDuca and In Bet Gaming, dealt from one standard 52-card deck. The Five Card Bonus house edge of 3.53% was verified by enumerating all 2,598,960 five-card combinations. See also hand rankings, how to play, the full FAQ and where to find a table.