VP odds question, hitting a royal?

Let's say a royal is supposed to hit about once in every 40,000 hands.

Suppose you play 40-thousand hands of VP at $5/coin level and fail to hit a royal.

So then you move down to the 25-cent coin per level, stick in a $20 bill, and hit a royal within just a few plays.

Have you wasted all those hands at the $5/coin level because you hit a royal playing quarters??

OK, now some serious info which I found on Wizard of Odds.

When progressives get very high, I think we are all tempted to "play for the royal," and the Wizard says when holding only the best cards for a royal draw, you can dramatically improve your chances for a royal:

"If your strategy were to maximize the number of royals at all costs then you would hit a royal once every 23081 hands."

I also appreciated this basic chart for the odds of drawing a royal based on the number of cards you hold:

1. 1/47
2. 1/combin(47,2) = 1/1,081
3. 1/combin(47,3) = 1/16,215
4. 1/combin(47,4) = 1/178,365
5. 4/combin(52,5) = 1/649,740

We always seem to wonder what are the chances of getting a royal holding only two or three or one card.

Again, from the Wizard of Odds website.

Money, I think you know the answer to your question already. There is no precise number of hands for anything in VP. All hands are independent and essentially your odds are about 1 in 40000 of hitting a RF on any particular hand with standard strategy.

Switching denoms does not change those odds. Switching games or switching strategies (essentially the same thing), does have an affect on the odds.

BTW, to get the 23K odds you need to do things like toss 4 aces and keep only one, or throw away a dealt 10 high straight flush and keep only the 10. Not something anyone would do with a normal game.

Yes. You should always play at the $5.00 level so you don't waste a royal if it happens. $25 or $100 is even better when it comes to prventing Royal Wasting.

oh wait a minute....What if you started at the quarter level and then played 40-thousand hands of VP.....didn't hit a Royal...and then moved up to the $5.00 level---put in a $25 bill and hit a royal on your first hand? How does that impact your hypothetical long-run Karma? Will all that quarter play offset some future $5.00 play or will the $20,000 become a cosmic luck imbalance…only to be offset by some poor unlucky dude who has a horrible run of luck on penny poker?

You can explore all the situations and crunch all the numbers,
but this enigma will always exist until someone writes a book in conjunction with a training software package titled


"Locating and Recognizing Lucky $20 Bills".



Rick

playing 40,000 hands at .25 then jumping to $5 if you haven't hit a royal, isn't that just an exaggeration of the system of *he who can't be named*?

I thought it is well known that if you play 40K hands at .25 your will hit the RF on the last hand played before switching to a higher denom.

I like oobie's post. That made me smile.

Arc, how high must a progressive be to justify using the "go for the royal" strategy?

ohhh... the example of playing $5 forever, then switching to 25-cent and hitting a royal did not happen to me. But slapinfunk and I were musing about that happening the other night. I was playing my usual $5 game and when finished I went over to slapinfunk who was on the 25-cent progressive, and I stuck in a twenty while he was "finishing up" and on my third play hit quad aces. needless to say, he was angry. LOL but then I said, damn -- why couldnt I have gotten quad aces when I was playing $5 ??? that launched our discussion about switching demonimations, etc.

change to the "go for the royal" strategy when the return of the royal is equal to the return of the strategy you are playing to hit the royal...

I am always willing to learn from my son. OK, what the heck does that mean? so how much does the progressive have to be to justify using the Wizards "go for the royal" strategy?

I want to say yes to this even though in theory it is the wrong answer.

I do not play much VP and probably have only played 40,000 hands, which is why I have only hit one royal in over ten years of playing. I usually play quarters, although my one royal was on night when I passed by a 50-play penny machine and won a whopping $40. I feel as I blew my once-every-ten-years royal by playing that penny machine.