royal flush

Hit a royal yesterday, while playing through some free play bonuses. It came at a really good time for me as I have been recovering from an illness and surgery and haven't played blackjack in over 8 weeks. With increased expenses and medical bills rolling in, I thought I was going to have to dip into my already depleted BR a second time in just over 3 months. This 4 grand will enable me to push that back a little while and hopefully I can get back to work before then.

Anyway, the reason for the post is that I only held one card, a jack and drew the other 4. My last royal a couple years ago, (I don't play a lot of VP, only free play playthru) I held 2 card and drew the other 3. This just seems incredible to me. All the times you hold 4 to a royal and draw squat, and you end up hitting when you hold one or two cards. Crazy. Hitting a royal is always a rush, but when it comes completely out of the blue like this (holding a single card) it seems to add a little something.

Anyone have similar experiences?

How about sitting down with a friend and not really wanting to play. But he wants to run a few bucks through a couple machines to keep the offers coming in. These were a bank of quarter progessives in Laughlin....many moons ago. So i agreed to play for him, just for half an hour, we hadn't discussed a fee if i hit the royal or anything. Well i load a hun into the machine and he is loading his, fumbling for his other card and i hit the Royal on my first hand!!!!!! Seriously, i held 2 cards..... i tell him hey i hit the sucker already, he looks over and says yea right....LOL....
He is still trying to get his card out....lol.....looks over again and then sees the flashing light on top of the machine. He is just as shocked as i am....lol
Well it was like 1400 bucks or so.....i take a couple of bills and all are happy......EXCEPT the change people paying me off.........I told him i was gonna stiff em, he walked away not wanting to see me do it....LMAO
The reason for the stiffing................the kocksuckers had escorted me out 2 days before for some Advanced strategy on a bank of well know machines. The bstrds!!!!! I mean come on, a guy gets tired of being escorted out after the 6th or 7th time!!!!!
Yea KJ,,,unexpected Royals at the right time are the nuts!!!!! And dollars to boot...Very nice!!!!!
I still remember my first royal, my first 4 deuces on deuces wild (dollars), it was in Vegas, my first AP play ever, Laughlin.......My first live poker game, 1 to 3 , 7stud,,,,Sams town Laughlin.......all very cool stuff

Machinist

Congrats. I don't play much VP, but I've never hit a royal. Hell, it's hard enough hitting a flush with 4 cards to a flush

Nice! Good story M. I am not very familiar with advantage play on machine. I know that is your expertise. But I can't understand why they would back you off and stuff like in BJ. You are not really playing against the house and taking money from them. They would be paying that money out to someone, so what do they care who. I am sure I am missing something. Can you shed any light on the thought process.

The unusual thing about my Royal was not the cards I was holding (3 cards to the Royal), but that I always play $1 machines. This place only offered 9/6 JOB on $2 machines, so I played for that amount for the first time. $8k instead of $4k. Not bad.

Thanx, 21. I don't play much either. Just some play thru. I really don't even know strategy tables for anything other than the basic JoB. But here in Vegas, just a small amount of VP at some of the 'locals' joints generates good mailers making it +EV. Also showing some VP play on the card can't hurt.

Play a LOT!!!!!

First, I must tell you that I play LOTS of video poker. I have had two royals dealt to me (initial five cards) in the past, and caught one on a FIVE card redraw earlier this year. (couldn't believe my eyes on that one!)
If you play long enough, you see it all. I've still not had a sequential royal.

BillyC1

I have one VP book, where the author swears you should go for jackpot over marginally better EV hands (where you can't get the jackpot). He said its just something he learned from extensively playing VP, the "law" of attraction or whatever you want call it.

E.g., you should keep an A rather than JQ offsuit, or something like that (don't recall the hand exactly, been a while since I played VP).

I think he means that if you have AJQ unsuited, you would drop the A and keep the JQ, but if the A was suited with one of the others, you would keep the suited pair.

For JoB I think that's the right play. What the author was suggesting was you should make the wrong play. My earlier example was not the best, so lets say you had QK unsuited, the author suggests you should just keep the Q. Now that I think about this a bit, I think the author gave the rationale that you want to keep the space open, instead of keeping the K, for the extra card to make your hand.

Seemed pretty bizarre to me, but the author swears by it from experience claiming to have played countless hours of VP, for what its worth.

Absoulutely wrong for 9/6 JOB..............UNLESS there is a Royal Flush progressive for the game. Even then the royal has to be quite high to hold either the K or Q by its self.
Look at a good strategy card and follow it....
Who is this author anyways??
Machinist

My most satisfying royal: I was in a store that was offering me a decent free-play each month and I wanted to keep it coming, so I always give them a little real action.

They also offer me a F&B comp that expires if I don't use it. I had already eaten, but when I passed the center bar I saw some top-shelf liquor I wanted to try, so I sat at the bar and used my comp for that.

There was a VP machine at the bar, progressive, wasn't quite to the point where it was +EV but not far from it, so I put a bill in, watched a ball game, enjoyed my drink and gave them their play. Pressed the button, and got something you get 1 in every 649740 hands, no skill required!

It was a good night at the tables too! :cool2:

The strangest royal I ever saw occurred at Borgata. I was playing this dollar machine (JOB 9/6) for quite some time, but got bored and took a break at the blackjack tables. When I returned to "my" machine, some guy was already playing it. I stood behind him, wanting to continue that machine when he was through. Suddenly he has a high straight flush, close to RSF, and he inexplicably throws away one of the cards to try for the RSF.. which he hits! I was feeling down because I had abandoned the machine, but then someone explained how the random number generator spits out so many thousands of combinations a second and that I would have to hit the button at precisely the same time as the guy on the machine to get the same result, which of course for all practical purposes is impossible. But besides that, who gives up a straight flush for a chance at a RSF? Maybe I would have in those days... I was pretty stupid.

Haha oh wow, he's throwing away ~150 credits in EV.

A sad story, some time ago I played a 100 play machine and dealt 4 to a royal and whiffed. And then 2hours later 4 to a royal and whiffed again.

Did say it was bizarre. I'm 99% sure the author is Victor Hoyer, he writes the "For Profit" series of books. His books are garbage. Having said that, I personally do like reading up on wacky "AP" ideas for the entertainment value and sometimes they providing stimulating, albeit wrong ideas.

And it was a dollar machine, too. I told the guy he was lucky and he responded proudly that he had to give up the straight flush to get the RSF. He actually credited himself with deserving it by virtue of his "skill" and/or risk-taking ability. :laugh:

well, tonight i did, :grin:
but it was holding four to the royal, held K,J,10,A clubs, and the ole gal of clubs came through for me, lol, with a small progressive, too.
pushed the button and thought, fat chance of this, then
weird thing was, i could do no wrong on hardly anything all night......sweet!

Congrats to you Mr Frog. :celebrate I have only had 4 royals in my life so far and they all have been holding 3 cards or less. I have never held four cards and drawn a royal. I thought I had actually done so earlier this week while playing some free play. I held 10, J, Q, K spades and drew a 9 of spades. For a second I thought I had hit my second royal in less than a hundred hands but it was only my eyes momentarily deceiving me. It was still a nice payoff for free play.

What I have notice though is several times when I have held 4 cards, I drew the same damn card as I discarded. Like a 4 of clubs. Discard a 4 of clubs, draw a new 4 of clubs. What the F**k is that. I guess the odds of this are the same as drawing the card you actually need.

Anyway, you apparently know how to do it right. Congrats.

BTW, if you could do no wrong, why aren't you still playing?

Wise Won

Dear Friend,

Congratulations, I am most happy for your Royal!:grin::celebrate

It could not happen to a better or more deserving AP.

Great feeling isn't it though, so darn And a magical night too eh, Wow!

My best,
CP

I don't think that is legal. I would report it to the gaming commission. As far as I know, the random generator is supposed to simulate a randomly shuffled deck WITHOUT replacement of drawn cards. I have often discarded a 4 of clubs, as an example, and received another 4 of a different suit, so much so, that I wondered if the machine was on the up and up. But what you describe cannot happen in real life, and so I believe it is also against the rules for machine play. Someone here with greater knowledge than myself needs to weigh in.