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What Happened to the Royal Flush?

29 January 2023

QUESTION: I was playing 9-5 Triple Double Bonus Poker. Not the top of the line pay table, I know, but not too bad for nickel Five Play game.

Four Aces with a low kicker brings 4,000 coins for a five-coin bet. It's as much as you'd get for a royal flush.

I was wondering, do you get the Aces and kicker more or less often than royals? It seems like the 4,000-coin jackpots would come a lot more often than in other games. How can the casinos pay that?

ANSWER: I'll tailor this to 9-5 Triple Double Bonus, but the basics are the same in the 9-7, 9-6, 8-5 and 7-5 versions.

Given optimal strategy, four Aces and with a 2, 3 or 4 as the fifth card come an average of once per 14,166 hands. That's about 2.74 times as often as you'll get royal flushes, which occur an average of once per 38,804 hands with expert play for this game.

Combined, you'll get that 4,000-coin payoff roughly once per 10,400 hands. That's a lot more often than on games where the only 4,000-coin payers are royals. In 9-6 Double Double Bonus, royals occur an average of once per 40,799 hands, and other games also hover around once per 40,000 depending on pay table and drawing strategy.

The key to more frequent big payoffs is to pay less on common hands. Games including Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus Poker, Super Double Bonus Poker and Super Aces pay only 1-for-1 on two pairs. That enables bigger four of a kind payoffs than you get in Jacks or Better or Bonus Poker, where two pairs bring 2-for-1.

Triple Double Bonus Poker takes another giant step in that direction. Not only do two pairs pay 1-for-1, but three of a kind returns only 2-for-1 instead of the 3-for-1 you receive on nearly all non-wild card video poker games. That smaller return on a common hand funds the more frequent 4,000-coin jackpots.


QUESTION: I know Spanish 21 has been around for a long time, but I never really tried it until a couple of months ago.

I was amazed at some of the rules. Player 21s always win, and player blackjacks even beat dealer blackjacks. You can double down on any number of cards, so if I have a three- or four-card 11, I can still double. You can even double after splitting Aces.

There were more cool rules, and it was a lot of fun, but I figured there must be a big mitigating factor somewhere. I just couldn't figure out what it was.

ANSWER: I remember when Spanish 21 was introduced. I saw it in the 1990s at the World Gaming Congress, which then was the major autumn casino industry trade show in Las Vegas. Game inventor Richard Lofink was in fancy Spanish garb with a shiny cape and flat-topped, wide-brimmed hat.

I asked Lofink how the house could afford the rules, and he explained that the major house-friendly rule is that it uses a so-called Spanish deck with 10-spot cards removed from play.

The only 10-value cards are Kings, Queens and Jacks. With fewer 10-values, there are fewer blackjacks. Your blackjacks win even when the dealer also has blackjack, but you're dealt blackjack a lot less often.

It also affects the odds in double down situations. If you double on 11, you'll get a 10 value to complete your 21 a lot less often in Spanish 21 than in regular blackjack.

An analysis at wizardofodds.com finds a house edge between 0.4 and 0.76 percent depending on some variable rules.
John Grochowski

John Grochowski is the best-selling author of The Craps Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book and The Video Poker Answer Book. His weekly column is syndicated to newspapers and Web sites, and he contributes to many of the major magazines and newspapers in the gaming field, including Midwest Gaming and Travel, Slot Manager, Casino Journal, Strictly Slots and Casino Player.

Listen to John Grochowski's "Casino Answer Man" tips Tuesday through Friday at 5:18 p.m. on WLS-AM (890) in Chicago. Look for John Grochowski on Facebook and Twitter @GrochowskiJ.

John Grochowski Websites:

www.casinoanswerman.com

Books by John Grochowski:

Winning Tips for Casino Games

> More Books By John Grochowski

John Grochowski
John Grochowski is the best-selling author of The Craps Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book and The Video Poker Answer Book. His weekly column is syndicated to newspapers and Web sites, and he contributes to many of the major magazines and newspapers in the gaming field, including Midwest Gaming and Travel, Slot Manager, Casino Journal, Strictly Slots and Casino Player.

Listen to John Grochowski's "Casino Answer Man" tips Tuesday through Friday at 5:18 p.m. on WLS-AM (890) in Chicago. Look for John Grochowski on Facebook and Twitter @GrochowskiJ.

John Grochowski Websites:

www.casinoanswerman.com

Books by John Grochowski:

> More Books By John Grochowski