vpFREE2 Forums

A Tough Year for Royals

#1

I just want to throw out my exceptionally lousy stats for the last year, perhaps to see if anyone can top them, perhaps just to let the newbies see just how long the streaks can get...

I hit my first $5 royal of the year last Saturday. The previous one was December 10, 2010. Since I don't plan to play much more this year, I'm closing the books, considering that interval a year, and reporting the stats now.

Between Dec 10, 2010 and Dec 17, 2011, I played 548,758 hands with a total of 3 royals. I had a $1 royal on May 7, a $2 royal May 8 and a $5 royal on Dec 17. That is an average of 182,919 hands per royal, playing predominantly Jacks or Better. Given that number of hands, one might expect over 13 royals.

In previous years, my stats have looked more normal. From the point that I started playing standard games instead of progressives, through the end of 2010, I had 115 royals in 4,949,418 hands for an average of 43,038 hands per royal. Since there was a period when most of my play was Deuces Wild, this average is not too far above my expectations.

As far as droughts go, until this year, I've had only had two 5-cycle droughts before, both in 2007. The first was 205,341 hands; the second was 236,754 hands. This year I had one interval of 235,814 hands and one (the one that just terminated) of 288,114 hands.

In terms of video poker, it has truly been a miserable year for me. Can anyone top over half a million hands with only 3 royals?

* I have something of a bookkeeping technicality to add: I only list taxable royals for games of 1-9 lines in my royal log. Those are the royals that really impact my bankroll. A nickel royal on a 100-play machine ($200) is just another hand in my opinion, so I segregate what I call n-play games to a different universe. For this year, I have played 354,764 hands of n-play VP with 8 royals. That's an average of 44,346 hands per royal. This is close enough to expectations to consider normal, but of course these payouts did nothing to repair the bankroll damage done by months of losses on substantial $5, $10 and $25 play without royals.

** I played quite a bit less video poker this year than I have in the past. I hope next year affords the opportunity to play more.

#2

I generally go through a royal drought of 200000 - 250000 hands about once or twice a year, but I count n-play hands in those stats (I noticed that you don't count n-play with n > 9).

Because I find droughts of that length somewhat normal, what I tend to find most disconcerting is when you are not only having a royal drought but you are also taking a beating on the drop. I'm currently on a single-line drought of only 100000 hands, but I'm down over $350000 in less than two months (playing $10 with one $25 session thrown in). I've certainly never experienced that before and this will likely be my first negative year because of it, but in times like these, it helps to remind myself that I wouldn't have had that money in the first place if it weren't for vp. As long as I keep playing positive EV and employing the decision making processes that made me the money in the first place, I SHOULD eventually grind it back. But that being said, it certainly feels more like a grind when you think about how long it will probably take just to get out of the hole.

I hope things run better for both of us soon.

#3

I certainly can't top that (who would want to?), but I did have one year with only two royals in about 225,000 hands.

What I do have going right now, however, is a streak of 176 (and counting) consecutive failures to complete a royal, drawing one card to a four to the royal deal.

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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "carter561@..." <carter561@...> wrote:

In terms of video poker, it has truly been a miserable year for me. Can anyone top over half a million hands with only 3 royals?

#4

Does anyone get Wranglers Hockey tickets in your mailers anymore? Haven't
had any this year and I like to take my son to a few games during the
season. If anyone gets them and you're not using them give me a private
shout out and maybe I could trade you something? Thanks.

Scot

#5

What's a Royal? Just kidding. I'm fairly new to VP in the last 5 years or so. Still haven't hit one in over 300,000 hands. I've watched the folks on my bank hit them many a time, and several of them didn't even have a clue as to how to play. My only royals have been on Win Poker, and they come at the average rate. Maye I'll try taking a good luck charm with me next time! LOL

Kurt

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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "carter561@..." <carter561@...> wrote:

I just want to throw out my exceptionally lousy stats for the last >year, perhaps to see if anyone can top them, perhaps just to let the >newbies see just how long the streaks can get...

#6

Carter, 0 for 176 is certainly a long time between hits on a 1/47 event but the stat by itself doesn't mean all that much ( unless you suspect an illegal machine). During that length of play, how many royals did you actually hit? If the number of royals hit during the length of play is within expectations, it shouldn't matter how the royals get there.

Going one step further, if the overall return for the game is within expectation, the hand distribution should not matter. If I play 40,000 hands of JOB and get and get 2 less straight flushes but 4 more quads than expected, is that an unusual event?

You could take it a step further in the other direction. After you play 1.28 Million hands and have an expected RF count of 32 ( approximate numbers) you probably won't have 8 of each suit. If you have 12 diamond, 7 heart, 8 club and 5 spade, you could state that the expected number of spade royals in this grouping is way low and the diamond royal number is way high. The more conditions you put on a given distribution, the more likely you are to find deviations from the expectation and the longer the cycle to get to expected value.

I haven't taken the time to prove it but I would hypothesize that if you run a series of 10,000 hand trials, you can find an 'unusual event' in most of them. I'll have to define what an unusual event is but you get the idea.

With VP, you take a bunch of normally distributed events ( the various hand probabilities) and give them a skewed weighting factor ( the pay table) to get a decidely non normal function ( the return of the game).

The real 'random' part of the game is in the card distribution. If you take the time and record dealt hands for a sufficiently large number, the card distribution on dealt hands should match the expected value. So, if you record 5200 deals, you should see an ace of clubs come up about 500 times. The same with the rest of the cards. That is the real distributions you should be looking at to see if there is an issue. Once again, this is assuming no external force to influence the distribution.

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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "carter561@" <carter561@> wrote:

What I do have going right now, however, is a streak of 176 (and counting) consecutive failures to complete a royal, drawing one card to a four to the royal deal.

#7

The 0 for 176 stat is not Carter's, it's mine.

Carter, the original poster, stated that one of his (or her) reasons for posting was to "let the newbies see just how long the streaks can get...".

My comment on my 0 for 176 streak was meant to reinforce that point with my own example.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. We shouldn't compartmentalize. But that's sometimes a difficult maxim to follow when you are having a tough time in a particular area of the game. And, no, I have not experienced an overabundance of royals via other routes that would compensate for the "shortfall".

Since this personal streak of mine has involved play at a dozen or so machines at four different casinos, the idea of an illegal machine is a non-starter. To me, it's bad luck, and will turn around. I just hope it's soon.

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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "johnnyzee48127" <greeklandjohnny@...> wrote:

Carter, 0 for 176 is certainly a long time between hits on a 1/47 event but the stat by itself doesn't mean all that much ( unless you suspect an illegal machine). During that length of play, how many royals did you actually hit? If the number of royals hit during the length of play is within expectations, it shouldn't matter how the royals get there........."

#8

I can't find the message, but someone who said he was a newbie asked how I know exactly how many hands I've played. I'm sorry I didn't get back quicker, but there was some technical difficulty, some holidays, etc.

I carry a small notebook. Every time I play I record the following:
Casino, machine number, exact game (e.g. $1 10x 9-6 Jacks), start time, money in, start points, end time, money out, end points. There are a few nuances, but I record this info for every session I play. When I get home, I transfer that info to a spreadsheet.

At every casino, I know how many dollars coin in earns one point, therefore, I determine my coin in from the points. Since I know the game, I know how much coin in is produced by each hand (# coins x denomination). Divide that out to get how many hands you played.