"Cycle" is a standard statistician's term for the average number of tries for a certain event. In video poker it usually refers to the royal cycle, and 40,000 hands is frequently used as a typical royal cycle. Actually, the cycle is different on different games mainly because you use a different strategy, but I'll use 40,000 for this discussion.
I have always hated the use of the term "cycle" because to some people it implies that a machine will yield a royal flush once per 40,000 hands. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, the cycle is simply the reciprocal of the probability of a royal on the next hand. I prefer to say that the probability of a royal is about 1/40,000 = 0.000025 on each play.
Since the cards are dealt at random, the probability of a royal on any given play is roughly 0.000025 regardless of any history of the machine or of your play. It doesn't matter whether you had two royals in the last five minutes or if both you and the machine have gone 200,000 plays without a royal.
Dan
ยทยทยท
"rafoil38" <BANDSTAND54@AOL.COM> wrote:
Can someone step forward(Einstein not so fast!) and tell me
in layman terms what is meant by the term "cycle"pertaining to a
RF.Can I rule out Harley-Davidson and Menstrual?
--
Dan Paymar, author of the book, "Video Poker - Optimum Play"
Editor and Publisher of "Video Poker Times" newsletter
Web site at http://www.OptimumPlay.com
"Chance favors the prepared mind."
-- Louis Pasteur