The Royal Flush

• The Royal Flush Girls
• The Royal Flush
• The Royal Flush Bathroom

The ins and outs of that most elusive of hands

The Royal Flush Contracting Ltd., Campbell River, British Columbia. From landscaping, yard maintenance, pressure washing, gutter systems, residential. The Royal Flush Gang is a fictional group of supervillains appearing in DC Comics.The group, which debuted in Justice League of America #43 (March 1966), use a playing card theme. Their code names are based on an ace-high straight in poker: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten.The group returned to battle the Justice League of America many times, and also appeared in other comics, including Wonder.

By Henry Tamburin

I get many questions about a royal flush in video poker. That’s not too surprising since the royal flush is the premier hand that all video poker players dream (and hope) of getting. Here’s a sample of questions and my responses.

Q: I’ve been playing video poker several times a week for over a year. You keep saying that a royal flush occurs once in every 40,000 hands yet I still haven’t gotten a royal. What gives?

Firstly, I never wrote that you could expect one royal flush after playing 40,000 hands (or one cycle). What I wrote was, “On average, you will hit a royal flush once in every 40,000 hands.” The word “average” means a whole bunch of sets of 40,000 hands. In other words, in any given set of 40,000 hands, you could hit more than one royal flush or, heaven forbid, possibly no royals. In fact, you have a 36.8% chance that you won’t get a royal in one cycle (40,000 hands), and a 13.5% chance after two cycles (80,000 hands). Ouch! Therefore, the fact that you went over a year without a royal is statistically possible.

Q: How come every time I need one card for a royal flush, it never shows up, but that exact card that I needed always seems to show up on the very next hand?

That’s because you have “selective memory.” The computer program in the video poker machine that randomly selects the cards for each hand doesn’t use the information from previous hands to determine which cards it will deal. Every hand is a random deal regardless of what cards appeared (or didn’t appear) on the previous hand.

Q: Over three years, I hit seven royal flushes in the same casino and none in two other casinos that I play regularly. I’m beginning to believe those casinos somehow tighten their video poker machines so players can’t get a royal.

You will average one royal flush per roughly every 40,000 hands at any casino. Casinos can’t change the odds of hitting a royal flush. (What they can do is change the payout … some casinos will pay less than 4,000 coins for a royal flush; therefore, always check to be sure that the payout for a five-coin royal flush is 4000 coins.) The bottom line is as long as the pay schedule is the same for a particular video poker game, the odds of getting a royal flush will be the same no matter where the machine is located (assuming a random deal).

Q: I’ve been dealt many three- and four-card royal flushes lately. What are the odds of this happening?

Playing Jacks or Better, you’ll experience the thrill of being dealt a four-card royal flush once in every 2,777 hands (roughly once every four hours on average). Once in every 92 hands, on average, you’ll be dealt a three-card royal flush (about 7-8 per hour). This is what makes video poker exciting; namely, that you’ll have several opportunities to draw for a royal flush even if the odds are somewhat long (see next question).

Q: When you hold three cards to the royal flush, what is the chance of getting the two cards that you need on the draw for a royal flush?

You have a one in 1,081 chance of getting the two cards you need for the royal flush. The following table shows the chance of hitting the royal flush on the draw when you hold x cards to the royal flush.

Q: If I’m dealt a three-card royal flush and a high pair in the same hand, why does the strategy say to hold the high pair when the royal flush pays so much more?

You need to analyze all the possible winning hands that you could get when you hold a three-card royal flush vs. when you hold a high pair in the same hand. These calculations have already been done for you. For example, suppose your initial hand contains 10-J-Q of diamonds along with a queen of clubs. The expected return (ER) for holding the pair of queens is 7.6827 vs. 7.4098 for holding the three-card royal flush (this is for 9/6 Jacks or Better). In dollars and cents, you’d earn 27 cents more on average for a max coin wager on a dollar denomination machine by holding the high pair vs. the three-card royal flush in this example.

Q: My wife plays Jacks or Better. The other day she was a dealt a hand that contained a four-card straight flush with a gap and a three-card royal flush. She held the three-card royal flush. Was that the correct play?

I’m sorry to say it wasn’t. The correct play was to hold the four-card straight flush—even with a gap—over the three-card royal flush. (Tip: If your wife had a strategy card with her, she would have made the right play.)

Q: What are the odds of being dealt a royal flush in the initial hand?

The odds are one in 649,740 hands. You might think that’s close to impossible but it could happen. (This happened to me once while I was showing my father-in-law how to play a Triple Line video poker game in a Las Vegas casino, resulting in a royal flush on each line. How’s that for luck?)

Q: How much does the royal flush contribute to the 99.54% return for 9/6 Jacks or Better?

The royal flush contributes 1.9807% toward the overall 99.64% return. The following table summarizes the contribution of each winning hand toward the overall 99.54% return (for 9/6 Jacks or Better). When you don’t hit the royal or straight flush, the best return you can expect, even playing perfectly, is about 97%.

Got a video poker question? Send it to HTamburin@aol.com.

Tamburin’s Tip of the Month

You are playing NSU Deuces Wild. How would you play these hands that don’t contain a deuce?

In the top hand, your best play is to hold the consecutive three-card straight flush 6-7-8 (2.77 ER) over the four card straight 5-6-7-8 (2.55 ER). In the bottom hand, because the three-card straight flush has a gap (2.47 ER) your best play is to hold the consecutive four-card straight 4-5-6-7. When you play NSU Deuces Wild and your initial hand doesn’t contain a deuce, you should hold a consecutive three-card straight flush (5-6-7 through 9-10-J) over a consecutive four-card straight (from 4-5-6-7 to 10-J-Q-K), but the latter over a three-card straight flush with one or two gaps.

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Henry Tamburin is a blackjack and video poker expert. He is the host of the smartgaming.com website and the editor of the Blackjack Insider newsletter (for a free three-month subscription, visit www.bjinsider.com/freetrial). For a free copy of his Casino Gambling Catalog, which contains books, strategy cards, and software for video poker players, call toll free 1-888-353-3234, or visit the web store at smartgaming.com.

'A Royal Flush' is the fifth Christmas special episode of the BBCsitcom, Only Fools and Horses, first screened on 25 December 1986. It was re-edited into a shorter version with added laughter track and released on DVD in 2004. In the episode, Rodney becomes friends with the daughter of a Duke, and Del decides to help him make the right impression.

Synopsis[edit]

As Del Boy sells cutlery to the local market crowd, Rodney spots an attractive woman, and abandons his lookout position to talk to her. At Sid's cafe, she introduces herself as Vicky. As the conversation develops, Rodney discovers that she is Lady Victoria Marsham Hales, of Covington House, Berkshire, the daughter of the Duke of Maylebury, who is a second cousin of the Queen. She also explains that her mother died in a skiing accident. Sensing a chance to make the Trotter family millionaires, Del decides to assist Rodney's blossoming friendship with Lady Victoria, such as by acquiring tickets for the opera Carmen.

On the night of the opera, Rodney and Victoria arrive, only to see that Del has also shown up, along with June Snell (last seen in 'Happy Returns'), a former girlfriend of Del and mother of one of Rodney's ex-girlfriends. Del and June ruin the night by noisily eating snacks, talking during the performance, and arguing with other members of the audience. Nonetheless, Victoria invites Rodney to stay at Covington House for the weekend. Wanting Rodney to make a good impression, Del insists that he dress as a country gentleman in a tweed suit. Already nervous during the weekend in Berkshire, Rodney is horrified when Del arrives with a reluctant Albert in the Reliant Regal, claiming to have turned up to deliver Rodney's evening suit that he 'forgot' (although Rodney knows that he packed it and Del removed it so he had an excuse to turn up). As Rodney seethes with anger, Del introduces himself to Victoria's father Henry and invites himself to that evening's dinner having coincidentally brought his own evening suit. Del takes part in their clay pigeon shoot using a pump-action shotgun borrowed from Iggy Higgins, a local bank robber, and quickly begins to irritate Henry.

The Royal Flush Girls

At dinner, Del gets drunk and boorish and starts insulting the guests with lewd comments, touting a marriage between Rodney and Victoria, not shutting up about the artist Leonardo Da Vinci and embarrassing Rodney by revealing his conviction for possession of cannabis. Del finally pushes Henry over the edge by telling a skiing joke (despite knowing that's how Victoria's mother died). In a fury, Henry demands Del meets him outside. As the two leave, Victoria asks Rodney if he's still staying overnight. He regretfully declines and decides to go home, which Victoria allows. Outside, Henry orders that Del, Rodney and Albert are to leave his house immediately. Del tells Henry that Rodney may need to be paid off to leave Victoria alone.

Back at the flat, a furious Rodney relates to a very hungover Del how he has always ruined his opportunities to make a success of his life by interfering, and injures his hand punching a vent cover out of anger. After Rodney reveals that he refused the offer of a £1,000 pay-off from Henry to stop seeing Vicky (angering Del, who had arranged the offer), Del says that had Rodney refused to stop seeing Victoria, he would probably have been assassinated by the Special Branch because of his conviction for drug use. Del ostensibly apologises to Rodney and asks him to shake his hand, but this turns out to be a ploy for Del to inflict punishment on Rodney for refusing the £1,000 by squeezing his bad hand.

Episode cast[edit]

The Royal Flush

Music[edit]

• The Smiths - Ask
• Erasure - Sometimes
• Kent Opera: Handel's Overture for the Royal Fireworks
• Kent Opera: Extracts from Bizet's Carmen

Episode concept[edit]

This episode was inspired by two things. One was how the younger nobility were becoming closer, apparently, to the working class and the second was stories in the newspapers about Special Branch being employed to protect the younger royals from possible kidnap. Sullivan put these two things together when writing the episode and created the storyline of how Del would protect Rodney and at the same time make a few bob on it. 'Although Del comes across as rather cruel in the episode, his heart is in the right place'.^[1]

Home video[edit]

The episode was first released on the VHS format. The VHS release has the episode intact as per its original broadcast.

The DVD was later released containing the 2004 edited version and not the original broadcast version. This version was heavily re-edited and included a laughter track which the original broadcast did not have, reportedly due to the limited time available between recording and broadcast. The reason for the edits and cuts was Sullivan's dissatisfaction with the original version, feeling that it seemed to show Del Boy in a negative light. Whereas Del was always seen to be a lovable rogue, in this episode there were some scenes where he came over as boorish and offensive.^{[2][page needed]}

The original broadcast version was released on DVD in 2005 with issue 13 of The Only Fools and Horses DVD Collection magazine series. When this 2005 edition was released it included another Christmas special, 'The Frog's Legacy'. On the back of the DVD case it states 'This Has Been Edited for Contractual Reasons.' However, there are no edits on the DVD; both 'The Frog's Legacy' and 'A Royal Flush' are intact, as they were originally broadcast.

References[edit]

1. ^'The Only Fools and Horses DVD Collection'. The Only Fools and Horses Collection (13): 4. 2005. ISSN1743-2065.
2. ^Clark, Steve (1998). The Only Fools and Horses Story. London: BBC. ISBN056338445X.

External links[edit]

The Royal Flush Bathroom

• 'A Royal Flush' at IMDb