{"id":5775,"date":"2017-05-09T10:19:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T17:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=5775"},"modified":"2017-05-10T09:04:58","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T16:04:58","slug":"paying-avoid-royal-flushes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/paying-avoid-royal-flushes\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying to Avoid Royal Flushes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assume you are a 5-coin dollar player playing 9\/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt 3\u2660 A\u2665 K\u2665 T\u2665 5\u2665<\/span>. \u00a0The only two plays to consider are holding three hearts to the royal flush and holding all four hearts.<\/p>\n

If we check out EV, we find holding three hearts is worth $6.43 and holding four is worth $6.38. That nickel\u2019s worth of EV has always been too much for me to ignore and I go for the royal every time.<\/p>\n

BUT, I file as a professional player\u00a0and get lots of W-2Gs. Let\u2019s say you don\u2019t get a lot of W-2Gs. In that case, each one that you do get has some serious tax consequences. What if you held the four hearts in order to prevent the W-2G?<\/p>\n

Once every 1,081 times on average, AKT<\/em><\/strong> turns into a royal flush. If you gave up a nickel each of those 1,081 times and ended up getting one fewer royal flush, it would cost you $55 (rounding slightly).<\/p>\n

This is probably not too high a price to pay because a $4,000 royal has far more than $55 worth of tax consequences.<\/p>\n

AKT <\/em><\/strong>(and AQT<\/em><\/strong> and AJT<\/em><\/strong>) are the weakest 3-card royal flush draws for two separate reasons. First, the presence of the ace eliminates all straight flush possibilities and reduces straight possibilities. Second, the presence of a ten\u00a0reduces the chances for a high pair.<\/p>\n

If we compared the preceding hand to 3\u2666<\/span> A\u2663 K\u2663 J\u2663 5\u2663, holding this 3-card royal flush is better than the 4-card flush by a little more than 17\u00a2 and avoiding the $4,000 royal flush over 1,081 opportunities will cost you $185. That\u2019s quite a bit more than the $55 we were talking about earlier.<\/p>\n

Going for the flush from 3\u2665<\/span> K\u2660 Q\u2660 T\u2660 5\u2660 costs us $683 over the 1,081 draws, and from 3\u2663 K\u2666 Q\u2666 J\u2666 5\u2666<\/span>, it sets you back $770. Finally, from 3\u2660 Q\u2665 J\u2665 T\u2665 5\u2665<\/span> you\u2019ll lose a whopping $1,095 over the 1,081 hands by going for the flush every time.<\/p>\n

So where do you draw the line? I\u2019m not sure. I go for the 3-card royal on all of these hands. You\u2019re going to have to decide for yourself what avoiding a W-2G is worth.<\/p>\n

Other factors: If it were a multiple point day and\/or there was another juicy promotion which gave me a considerable advantage playing this game, I would be more inclined to go for the flush. After all, time is money and it could easily take 5-20 minutes to be paid.<\/p>\n

If I were playing in a state where royals were penalized (say Mississippi which has a 3% non-refundable tax on W-2Gs), that would make going for the flush mandatory in our first example and a closer play in the others.<\/p>\n

If I were playing near the limit of my bankroll — either actual or psychological — I would tend to go for the flush, which is a play with a much lower variance.<\/p>\n

On the first hand, you get skunked about 70% of the time going for the royal and \u201conly\u201d 68% of the time going for the flush.\u00a0 If I were someone for whom today\u2019s score mattered, I might go for the flush.\u00a0 \u00a0I certainly don\u2019t recommend that you worry about today\u2019s score, but some players just can\u2019t help themselves.<\/p>\n

This wouldn\u2019t happen to me because I don\u2019t do this, but if you were picking up someone else\u2019s free-play and a royal flush would be awkward and you insisted on playing dollars anyway because you were in a hurry, I would go for the flush every time on these hands.<\/p>\n

There are other hands in this game and every other game where it could make sense to avoid the possibility of a royal flush if it could be done at a low cost. But you should look at them one-at-a-time BEFORE YOU PLAY so you know which \u201cinferior\u201d plays are cost-effective. Trying to figure it out at the machine is very difficult. It\u2019s easy to over-compensate when you\u2019re doing this without study beforehand.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assume you are a 5-coin dollar player playing 9\/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt 3\u2660 A\u2665 K\u2665 T\u2665 5\u2665. \u00a0The only two plays to consider are holding three hearts to the royal flush and holding all four hearts. If we check out EV, we find holding three hearts is worth $6.43 and holding four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3],"tags":[208,318,1424,1556,220,179,195,196,1555],"yoast_head":"\nPaying to Avoid Royal Flushes - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/paying-avoid-royal-flushes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paying to Avoid Royal Flushes - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Assume you are a 5-coin dollar player playing 9\/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt 3\u2660 A\u2665 K\u2665 T\u2665 5\u2665. \u00a0The only two plays to consider are holding three hearts to the royal flush and holding all four hearts. 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