Ask the Slot Expert: Was that really a missed royal?

How many times has this happened to you? You hit the Deal button and your final hand has four cards of a royal flush. You grumble a bit, maybe curse out the machine, and say, "Another missed royal."

But did you really just miss out on a royal?

Anytime I end up with four cards to a royal in my ending hand, my gut reaction is to think, Ugh. So close. Just missed it. Darn machine. It seems to happen quire frequently. But then I took a closer look at the hands and I realized I wasn't being fair to the machine. Based on the cards I held, many times it was impossible for me to get a royal flush.

I play Deuces Wild almost exclusively. I hold a lot of deuces. If I hold a deuce and a partial royal and end with a four-card royal with the deuce, I can't complain about a missed royal because holding the deuce made it impossible to have a natural royal. (I have to admit that I've never been disappointed by getting a deuce with a four-card royal -- or any dirty royal, for that matter -- because they are worth so much. I don't think I've even been disappointed when holding a four-card royal and getting a deuce instead of the card I needed for the royal. Getting my share of dirty royals sometimes turns a losing session into a winner.)

Perhaps the most common royal near miss scenario, and one that happens to everyone, is the four-card royal along with a pair. You're dealt a pair, hold the two cards, and get dealt three cards that go along with one of the cards in the pair to give you a four-card royal. That four-card royal really stands out on the screen, giving players visions of credit meters increasing by 4000 credits dancing in their heads.

But they should have driven all hopes of a royal out of their heads after they held the pair. There was no viable path to winning a royal after holding the pair. They didn't just miss a royal. They missed out on a three-of-a-kind, a four-of-a-kind or a full house.

The next time you see a four-card royal on the screen at the end of a hand and you're mad at the machine, take a moment and take a deep breath. Was a royal flush a possible outcome given the cards you held?

If it wasn't, you didn't just miss a royal. Calm down. You might even lower your blood pressure.

Here are the latest figures from https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases.

Click here for the latest Covid data.

It's deja vu, all over again.

The daily number of new Covid cases is setting records. Hospitals are at or nearing capacity with Covid patients. Field hospitals are being set up to handle the overflow.

The daily number of new deaths is steadily increasing. Refrigerated trucks are needed to store the bodies of the victims.

These were the headlines a few months ago and now they're the headlines again.

But the circumstances are different. The weather is cooling and not warming, so we're spending more time indoors and not outdoors. The strain on the health care system is across the country and not limited to a few areas. Doctors and nurses can't go to hotspots to help because they're needed where they are.

At the end of August I went to Costco for the first time since April. It was comforting to see the paper products aisle that was roped off in April open and fully stocked again in August. When I went back last week, part of that aisle was filled with pallets of wreaths and there were no pallets of Kirkland products, which was disappointing because I specifically wanted to try the Kirkland tissues to see how they compare with Kleenex, which I usually buy. (I somehow had an offer for a free box of Albertson's brand tissues. I wonder what the grit rating on them is. The Kirkland brand product is supposed to be better than the name brand in at least one aspect, so I wanted to give them a try. Maybe next time.)

Purchase limitations on some products are back where they had been lifted. Still, stores have empty shelves again. I'm surprised that there are so many panic buyers left that didn't stock up in the spring. And you'd think that people would have learned that one reason there were shortages is because people overbought. If people would just buy the products as they normally would, the supply chain will keep up.

Stay at Home 2.0 didn't slow down the spread of the virus in Nevada, so Gov. Sisolak has reinstated some restrictions in a pause for the next three weeks. Casinos, bars, and restaurants are limited to 25% capacity again. A new restriction is that now everyone, residents and visitors, is required to wear a mask at all times, indoors and outdoors, when around people that are not in their immediate household. If Nevada's numbers don't improve, the governor said that he might have to close businesses again.

If people have Thanksgiving dinners that mix households -- and it looks like it will be too cold on Thursday to eat or spend much time outside -- is there any chance that the numbers will improve?