What are your Odds of getting a Video Poker Royal Flush?
While there are lots of nice payouts available in video poker games, most players have their minds fixated one one specific hand: the royal flush. The amount of money you win for a typical royal flush differs depending upon the specific game; but a standard, non-progressive 9/6 Jacks or Better game will pay 4,000 coins - or $5,000 on a 5-coin ($1.25) wager.
Obviously anybody would be thrilled to win this kind of cash with a single video poker hand. But as you may have guessed, royal flushes don't come around very often when compared to other hands. In fact, let's take a look at your exact chances of hitting a royal on any single hand.
Long Shot
Using the aforementioned Jacks or Better game as an example, your odds of being dealt a royal flush right away are 1 in 649,740, or a 0.00015% chance. Sure this isn't very good, but remember that these odds are before you start discarding/drawing cards. So it's also worth looking at your chances of being dealt each component of a royal, which you can see below:
Getting a royal flush = 1 in 649,740 odds
Starting with 4 royal flush cards = 1 in 2,777
3 RFCs = 1 in 92
2 RFCs = 1 in 13
1 RFC = 1 in 6
Drawing to a Royal
We just discussed how players can receive certain parts of a royal flush and improve their opportunities of getting video poker's best hand. And by now you may be wondering exactly what the odds are of hitting a royal flush payout based on the number of royal cards you have. Well here are the odds of this happening based on each situation:
Drawing from 4 RFCs = 1 in 47 odds
Drawing from 3 RFCs = 1 in 1,081
Drawing from 2 RFCs = 1 in 16,215
Drawing from 1 RFC = 1 in 178,365
Drawing from 0 RFCs = 1 in 383,484
For the 1 in 2,777 times that you'll be dealt four royal flush cards, you have 1 in 47 odds of grabbing video poker's largest payout. The reason why it's a 1-in-47 chance is because five cards have already been dealt, and one of the remaining 47 cards (standard 52-card deck) will net you the jackpot.
Beating the Odds
No matter how you slice it, getting a royal flush isn't exactly easy. Even with four cards to a royal, you're still praying for good luck. However, it's important to understand that these odds only represent the long-term cycle (based on hundreds of thousands of hands) that video poker games go through.
Many players have beaten these odds and earned a royal flush in much less time. So the point is that while some people will never get the game's highest hand, there's always a chance that it will happen.
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