Kevin Flops a Royal Flush!
"Your best chance to get a Royal Flush, in a casino, is in the bathroom." ~ V.P. Pappy
Kevin flopped a Spade Royal Flush during a regular season York Region Poker League Tournament. The odds of doing this are 1 in 2,598,960.
Probability and the Royal Flush:
A royal flush, strictly speaking, is just a glorified straight flush. A royal flush in spades is considered the highest possible hand. The chances of achieving it are only 1 in 2,598,960 possible hands.A great book to teach you how to calculate such numbers for yourself is "Probability without Tears" by Derek Rowntree.
This book would help you with the following calculations:
The first fraction is the chance of getting any one of 5 particular cards in the deck (5 in 52, since there are 52 cards in the poker deck). The second fraction is your chance of getting any one of 4 particular cards in the deck on your second card, and so on through the fifth fraction or the fifth card. By multiplying them together you find out what the chances are of coming up with any hand of unique cards. The numerator of our fraction in this case represents our royal flush in spades, while the denominator represents all the combinations possible. If these odds seem long (many lotteries have better odds), take solace in the fact that your chances of getting one of the four possible Royal Flushes dealt to you are four times as great (1 in 649,740).
As an added bonus it was in spades. (Kevin's hole cards were the KT spades and the flop came AQJ spades. The villain had a JQ offsuit for two pair).
The Royal Flush came at a critical stage of the tournament and allowed Kevin to move into the chip lead, and go on to win the Tournament and some nice $$$.
Kevin says that this is more rare than getting a Hole-In-One in Golf! (In 1999, Golf Digest reported, "One insurance company puts a PGA Tour pro's chances at getting a Hole-In-One at 1 in 3,756 and an amateur's at 1 in 12,750.")
A top Professional Poker Player, Daniel Negreanu, says he has never had a Royal Flush.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Royal Flush - Online
My 2nd Royal Flush:
My 2nd Royal Flush:
I had a Royal Flush while playing a $0.05 / $0.10 micro stakes cash game recently. On January 29, 2012 I got a Jack of Hearts, on the River, to complete the Royal Flush. Only won $1.50, but Hey - it's micro stakes :). At left, a screen shot of the Royal Flush:
My 3rd Royal Flush:
I was playing a $5 Tournament on Poker Stars and was dealt my 3rd Royal Flush in 3 years! A very rare occurrence!
My 2nd Royal Flush:
My 2nd Royal Flush:I had a Royal Flush while playing a $0.05 / $0.10 micro stakes cash game recently. On January 29, 2012 I got a Jack of Hearts, on the River, to complete the Royal Flush. Only won $1.50, but Hey - it's micro stakes :). At left, a screen shot of the Royal Flush:
My 3rd Royal Flush:
I was playing a $5 Tournament on Poker Stars and was dealt my 3rd Royal Flush in 3 years! A very rare occurrence!
My 4th Royal Flush (3rd online) occurred on September 26, 2014 in an $20 Party Poker online tournament. It was nice to get paid off as I went all-in on the River in an attempt to make it look like a bluff. The villain had just a pair of aces.
My 5th Royal Flush 27Sep2014
I was playing an online game of Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) and this was the result:
As you can see, I was dealt a Jc9cQsJs and hit the Royal on the river to double up. Given the four cards in my starting hand I have the equivalent of 6 hands in NLHE. So, hitting a Royal in PLO is statistically much easier.
