I, too, always play max coins; when I can't afford to do so at one denomination, I'll try to find an equivalent paytable at the next denom. down and play max coins again. To do otherwise is to give up expected return on my money, which I seem to do all the time the rest of my life, but at least my video poker play is smart.
I play recreationally, don't really know how much, but let's estimate: 1-4 hours per trip most (but not all) trips to places that offer VP with a "full pay" schedule (used to be 4-6 hours a day for the first several years, but I've cut back), probably 600 hands an hour, 10-15 trips per year to such places (some are riverboats and are just a few hours while passing thru, when I started, it was only a few trips a year to Vegas to play), started VP 12-13 years ago, and I've probably hit a half dozen or a dozen royals.
I have all the records of all my play, going way back, but only do the win/loss math at tax time, and have never totalled up over the years whether I'm a winner or loser, how much I play in total, and exactly how many royals I've hit. Doesn't really matter to me; I play for fun, but try to get max return on my "recreational" spending. As long as I know I'm playing a "good" game, I don't worry about the return, either short-term or long-term -- there's nothing I can do about it, except PERHAPS if I'm WAY below expectations, question my skill level or frequency with which I make mistakes -- which might be reasonable to do.
Most others who post on this list have hit royals many many times; some have also had long stretches without one, even if they play a lot.
How often (or whether) it will happen in your lifetime will depend on the same statistics -- given how many hands an hour you can play, and how many hours you will play in the rest of your lifetime, you can calculate the EXPECTED frequency of royals per lifetime -- with the understanding that this occurs over a standard distribution, and as a rare event, it is entirely possible to end up getting far more or far fewer than the expected frequency predicts.
And of course, we are assuming that the game won't change from the current statistical likelihood of a royal (I'd guess that the rest of the game WILL continue to change, with fewer and fewer decent paytables).
Whether this amount of play and hitting he expected number of royals shows a profit or not depends on the rest of the paytable on your machines, what your skill level is, and how few mistakes you make, again, with the element of random distribution affecting any individual's actual outcome. If you get more royals than you "should", but fewer of all the more common pays than you "should", you won't do as well. It's even possible to win without ever hitting a royal, but the expectation is that this will not happen, long-term; happens (less than half the time) short-term.
--BG
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2a. Re: Hitting a royal flush with maximum bet
Date: Mon Jul 13, 2009 8:56 am ((PDT))I ALWAYS, play the maximum coins in or I don't play at all. I'll bet that 95%
or more people on this board do the same. I have countless royals over the
years with maximum bets as this is very important for your total return
percentages.Has anyone here ever hit a royal flush with the maximum bet? If so, how many
time over how many years? I realize the odds of hitting the maximum payout is
quite rare. Just wondering if I will ever hit it in my lifetime.