Abstract: A video gaming apparatus that plays an interactive game of poker with a player provides a payback table that is modified at the beginning of each hand to provide at least one bonus card combination which has an increased payback amount. The bonus card combination having the increased payback amount is randomly selected prior to dealing the hand. In addition, the amount by which the payback is increased is also randomly selected. The bonus card combination and the increased payback amount are presented to the player prior to the player making a decision as to how to respond to the dealt hand so that the player must take the odds of completing the bonus card combination into consideration in deciding which cards to hold and which cards to discard and replace with drawn cards. Thus, an additional element of decision-making is added to the basic poker game, thereby providing differentiation between the improved poker game and conventional poker games.