Pedaling Hard for the Cycle

In baseball, a player “goes for a cycle” if he hits a single, double, triple, and home run in one game. These don’t happen too often — just twice in the 2025 Major League Baseball season, for example. The more at bats a player has, the more likely he can get these four specific hits in a single game.

There is no direct analog in video poker, but several of us have called hitting royal flushes in each of the four suits in a single “trip,” to be a cycle. The word “trip” is somewhat open to interpretation. I accomplished my first one in a day, playing 10¢ Hundred Play 8-5 Bonus Poker some 25 years ago at the Silverton when they had a promotion where the player could earn a Rolex watch if he played some large number of points in a month. I don’t remember why I felt it necessary to do this in one day, but I played many hours and earned the Rolex and the cycle. I didn’t write about my cycle at the time because I felt doing it on Hundred Play was “unfair.” You do, after all, collect a royal every hour or two in that game, so collecting a lot of royals is not a major accomplishment.

In 2026, I had a chance to do it on a single-line game. Last week I wrote about braving the weather to reach Harrah’s Cherokee for an 11-day trip. Although I played some slots, my video poker game of choice was $5 NSU Deuces Wild. 

On day 2, I connected on a royal flush in diamonds. I usually do not take pictures of my royals, and I didn’t this time either. On day 3, however, I connected on a royal flush in spades — this time memorializing it with my iPhone camera. On day 5, I hit a royal flush in hearts and, for the first time, began thinking of completing the cycle. On my trips of this length, I usually connect on one or two royal flushes, so with six days left, I had a decent shot at collecting at least one additional one. 

Hitting a royal, though, is not the same as hitting a club royal. All royals on this game pay the same $20,000, no matter the suit, but I wouldn’t qualify for the cycle unless it was specifically in clubs. And even if I did, I didn’t have a picture of my diamond royal flush, so I would have no “proof.” I decided this wasn’t a problem. Even if I had a picture of the diamond royal flush, there would be no proof that I was the one who hit it and did so on this particular trip. If someone wanted to doubt what I claimed, there would be plenty of room, with or without a picture.

I thought about how far I would go to hit this royal. On a hand such as K♣ Q♣ A♠ 3♣ 6♠, for example, it’s about a 4¢ mistake for the $5 five-coin player to hold the suited KQ rather than throw everything away. Most NSU players ignore the penalty cards on this type of hand, I believe, and hold the KQ. Making this mistake would give me a 1-in-16,215 chance of getting the club royal and completing the cycle on this particular play. While it would only be a slim chance, it would still be bigger than the zero chance I would have if I tossed all five cards. Plus, if and when I do indeed hit the club royal, nobody is going to ask me what five cards were dealt to me on the hands that ended up being royals. 

I decided I didn’t want to change my strategy. If the royal comes while I’m playing correctly, great. If it doesn’t, so be it. But I wasn’t going to be making intentional misplays (even those worth very little) in order to accomplish this feat. What I would do, I decided, was play longer hours. Instead of my normal $150,000 coin-in per day, I would play $180,000. This wouldn’t be cheating at all, at least not to my mind.

It’s one thing, of course, to claim the high ground with an “I’d never do that” promise when it’s hypothetical. There are a number of different hands similar to the one I listed above — but they don’t happen very often. I did get a couple of these hands after I was down to only needing one more suited royal to complete the cycle, one in hearts and one in spades, but nothing in clubs. I wasn’t really tested as to whether I would fudge correct strategy to complete my goal.

Before a hand arose causing me to think about “being flexible” in my strategy, the machine took the decision out of my hands by dealing me a club royal. A dealt royal is a 1-in-650,000 hand event. A dealt royal in clubs is only ¼ as likely as that. But that’s what happened.

As it turned out, I accidentally left my iPhone in my hotel room that day, so I couldn’t take a picture of the hand. I asked the slot attendant if she could take a picture of it and text it to me. Well, no, personal cell phones weren’t allowed for employees when they were working. They used iPads at this casino to process jackpots, and to be sure the iPads have cameras, but it’s a limited Wi-Fi that they use which only allows internal communication within the company.

However, she could AirDrop the picture. I had heard of AirDrop before, but had never used it and wasn’t sure how it worked. But I was told that if I brought my phone within the five remaining hours of this lady’s shift, I could get the picture via AirDrop. I agreed. It didn’t occur to me at the time to leave the royal on the screen for a half-hour while I walked 15 minutes each way to my hotel room. They probably would have agreed to that, but I don’t know for sure.

But the AirDrop worked so I have the picture which I’m sharing here. The way you know the royal was dealt is that above each card it says “HELD.” If I had to draw one or more cards, there would be fewer than five “HELD” indications.

So, I ended up getting the cycle. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Plus I am now tech savvy enough to use AirDrop!

In my career, I’ve had a number of “braggable” jackpots in casinos. Not that I needed another one, but this one was very welcome and very likely the last time I will ever complete a cycle in one trip! This was my first extended trip of 2026, and it starts off my year with a nice plus score.  

Often when someone experiences a rare hand, or combination of hands, the question of “Just how rare was this?” arises. That strikes me as a worthy topic for next week’s blog. After all, if I can’t get at least two blogs out of this, it couldn’t have been all that rare!