Video Poker 22 years and no Royal!

First ever sequential Royal Saturday morning at Coushatta in Louisiana.

 

Nice hit!

Did you realize it was a sequential draw before you hit it?

Too bad you weren't on a machine that awarded extra for it. But those are definitely tough to find.

 

No, my wife came over to congratulate and show her aunt what a royal flush looked like. She was the one who noticed it. I had not even realized it. Yea, I might have played 30 minutes on a Sequential Royal machine(Fremont) in my entire gambling life. By the way this was my first attempt at posting a picture so bear with me if I screw something up.

 

Looks like you did it right. Hope you'll have many more pic worthy hits to come!

 

19 years and 200k+ hands with no Royal. I knew that others out there had been helping me hold down the left-hand side of the curve.

 

23+ years and only one royal (about 5 years ago). 20 trips since and nothing.

The only thing more painful than royal photos on 1 credit are four to a royal hands not coming through. Have had PLENTY of those.

 

Sorry to be annoying but this is not the case. Your history of playing has zero effect on your chance of making a royal. Every hand is independent of every other. You have the same chance of hitting the royal the very first time you play as the 1001th time and the 99999999999945th time and every other time.

If you are considering your own improvement in strategy with practice, then that could get you closer, but once you have learned perfect strategy and play it consistently, your probabilities do not change over time.

 

I'm on a one-year plus dry spell, following two bang-bang in early 2018.

I've had five year dry spells.

 

Meh. Every hand has the same chance to make a royal, but the more hands you play, the more likely a royal is to eventually come.

If I would quit video poker for good right now (yeah, right lol), then my chances of hitting another royal become exactly zero. But if I play so many hands my chances of hitting at least one royal would be (assuming a 1 in 40,000 average)...

Hands...Probability of at least one royal
1000...2.47%
10,000...22.12%
20,000...39.35%
40,000...63.21%
75,000...84.66%
100,000...91.79%
200,000...99.33%
500,000...99.9996%

 

Interesting to see that after one "Royal Cycle" (~40,000 hands) the probability is only 63%!

 

Yes, for the true math dorks out there, the probability of not getting a royal after N cycles is also very close to 1 in e to the Nth power. The number "e" is approximately 2.718281828459045.

So for example 3 cycles, or 120,000 hands without a royal, would be 1 in e^3 = 1 in 20.086 = 4.98%.

 

Sounds like my sex life.....

 

When I first started playing video poker, I was very frustrated because it was years and I never got one! I was playing single line quarters and it was the slow boat, maybe 400 hands per hour. But once I hit that first Royal Flush, I haven't noticed any kind of major drought. I play very much faster now (I'm just generally faster plus the machines are faster now) and usually play 3-play.

It's funny how gambling works, though. You are always hoping for that 1 in 1,000,000 payout (or 1 in 40k for a royal), and it just happens when you least expect it. I once got three royals in less than 800 hands on the same machine. In all it took me about an hour and most of that was waiting for the hand pays.

I see the pictures that people post of Royal Flushes and they are playing single line machines at the slowest speed and get RF, SF, 4 AWAK. It's amazing. You really have to get lucky at that rate of speed. I realize there are a lot of people not posting photos of their droughts, but sometimes seeing the good streaks reminds you that there is a VP god.

 

Glad to hear you're hitting them more often now! Many posters here play video poker, so by sheer volume there are bound to be great wins. The one thing I hate about threads like this, the overroyaled people tend to never speak up, so I'm worried that maybe it could be rigged...

I am probably close to average lifetime (I didn't keep good records of hits until Fall 2013), but I'm clearly overroyaled since Sept. 2015! And hope to add another one next month!

 

Been going to Vegas 2X each year since 1996. Always stay downtown. Hit maybe 5 or 6 royals on nickels but never on quarter. About 10 years ago (at an indian casino) on my last bet got A,K,Q,10,4 all hearts. tossed the 4 and got the J. No more royals until May 2018. Playing at MSS , been in Vegas only an hour and drew 2 to hit a quarter royal. Four hours later playing 50 cent at bar I kept K of diamonds at hit the others for 2K. Unreal. then this past May I was dealt A,Q,J,10s and Kc. got the Ks on the draw. So hang in there. I never thought it would happen either!!

 

All of the short term "luck" or lack thereof is what I believe is called "residue of design". My parents have been playing since the early 1990s. My dad had a calendar year where he hit 37 royals. But when he was "winning" he went more times (casinos about an hour from where we live). He went more, had more to spend, so he saw more hands. All of this was on single line quarters. On the flip side, when he didn't have that royal streak, he would only go once every couple of weeks, etc. Less opportunity. Expected return is probability times opportunity. When the opportunities are reduced, the expected return is reduced. A couple of weeks ago he ended up hitting 3 of them on a total of 2 machines in less than 4 hours, so you never know.

My wife and I started at the end of the 1990s when we turned 21. We used to play once a week for $200 total (playing together on single line quarters). We did alright, a few royals here and there, but nothing really major. A few years ago, we started playing Triple Play, and increased our budget to $500. We noticed that we started getting more hands, etc. The reason in my opinion is more opportunity (more cash plus more hands, etc). We are at a spot now, where we will budget $1000, divided into 2 "sessions" when we play here in Colorado (once a week usually). We were able to build a bank roll, and just keep playing from using that cash, back and forth. Now, we also mix in some ten play quarters, ultimate x (3 and 5 play mainly, unless really on a hot streak then 10 play) on quarters. I don't even try to keep track of our royals any longer, but if we go more than 3-4 weeks without one, it seems like we have fallen behind the odds. Again, we play a ton of hands doing triple play separately now, and go for 8-12 hours in a session, so at 1,000 an hour times 3 times 8 is around 24,000 hands each per week.

One thing I do if I am in an extended slump is go back to my WinPoker app (set to match the machines I play) and test a few thousand hands. I do this to make sure I haven't developed any bad habits that are draining my accuracy percentage. This usually seems to help remind me that sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Usually, I know sitting at home not playing, is not the "right" place.

Sorry for the long read!

 

I tend to think most players, myself included, overestimate the amount of hands they play. 1000 HPH is fast, I can probably do it for a short time, but with a lot of fat-finger mistakes and overlooking spaced-out pairs. But 1000 HPH for hours on end, very doubtful. Every cash reload, potty break, cocktail order, cigarette puff ect. is knocking many hands off of that HPH rate.

But even at a sustained 1000 HPH, you are still looking at an average of 40-45 hours of play - far more than most people play during a typical Vegas trip or visit to the local.