Strictly Slots August 2022

EXPERT PLAY Every game has its own turning points on hands with royal potential WITH

BY JOHN GROCHOWSKI

T here’s nothing like a royal flush to make a video poker player’s day. On a quarter machine it’s a $1,000 payoff if you bet five coins, and it’s a grand experience. I remember every detail of my first royal.My hands were shaking as I showed my wife the 10 $100 bills. It was a December trip, so back at home we had a great time walking up Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, purchasing holiday gifts with cash. On most video poker games, royal flushes account for about 2 percent of the overall return. With that in mind, progressive jackpots on royals can eat into the house edge in a hurry. Specifics change with our strategy from game to game, but as a rule of thumb you can add half a percent to a game’s payback percentage for each 1,000 coins added to the jackpot. For example, 8-5 Jacks or Better, a 97.3 percent game with ex pert play and a 4,000-coin royal,becomes a 97.8 percent game with a 5,000-coin royal. “With expert play” is a key phrase here, because the best play for many hands changes depending on the size of the royal flush jackpot.

Every game has its own turning points on hands with royal potential,where the best play becomes chasing the royal instead of holding a hand that leads to more lower-level winners. Detailing those turning points for every video poker game and pay table variation would take an entire book. For now, let’s use one game that’s often been offered with a progressive jackpot— 8-5 Jacks or Better—to illustrate the kinds of adaptations players need to make. Virtually any hand that contains a royal flush card has a break even point beyond which it’s a more profitable play to go for the royal rather than make the usual strategy play. However, many such plays come at jackpot levels you’re unlikely to see in casinos.Knowing that in progressive 8-5 Jacks or Better, the royal prize has to get up to 19,500 coins before we hold suited King-Queen-10 instead of three 10s, is more of a trivia an swer than a useful strategy guideline. Another rarity: It’s possible you might see a jackpot of 11,412 coins—that’s $2,853 on a quarter machine—but it would be a surprise. Should you ever see the jackpot at that level, that’s the turning point for breaking up a King-high straight flush.The flat value of holding the straight f lush is 250 coins, and the average

38 AUGUST 2022 ■ STRICTLY SLOTS ■ www.casinocenter.com