Dear Mark,My buddy put $20 in a video poker machine, playing
$5 a hand to get the maximum payout. He lost the first three hands, but on
the fourth was dealt a natural royal flush. Number one, what are the odds
of a natural royal flush happening in video poker? Number two, what would
happen if he got nervous, and pressed the wrong button discarding all the
cards instead of standing? I suspect in that case he is out of luck, and
there is no payout. Keith A.
There are a total of 2,598,960 different hands that can be dealt to you
in video poker, or 649,760 for each of four suits. Odds for a natural
flush on the hand as dealt: 1 to 649,760. Luckily, the casino allows
us mortals to discard some cussed cards before we cross the Rubicon (See
below.) By drawing, simultaneously with using your noggin, your chances
of hitting a royal flush rise to approximately one in 40,000 — sixteen
times better than the odds on a natural. As to the second part of your
question, — nervous buddy, wrong button, etc. — NOTTA thing would have
happened. Why? Because, realizing most players do have nerves on edge
passing through what they see as a jungle of hungry lions, slavering
tigers and grizzly bears, all casinos (OK, if not 100% of them, just a
twitch fewer) idiot-proof the machines so as to lock in the jackpot,
thus blocking any suicidal tendency among those of us who get nervous
among undomesticated beasts.
Dear Mark,
Besides your common sense answers to gambling
questions, I also enjoy at the end of your column the gambling quote of
the week. Do you happen to know who is attributed with the quote "the
die is cast"? I vaguely remember it being George Washington credited
with it when he crossed the Delaware River. Alice P.
Credit instead the owners of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas with coming up
with the phrase "the die is cast." Yeah, Alice, I'm exaggerating a bit,
but linguistically not far off. In 49 BC, a different Caesar crossed the
Rubicon, a small river forming the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and
Italy. On crossing the river into Italy, he shouted, "iacta alea est,"
which means the die is cast. The significance of Caesar exclaiming
"iacta alea est" was that by crossing the Rubicon, he was at the point
of no return; he was declaring war on Pompey. Today, when an action
marks a situation where there is no going back, we can say the Rubicon
has been crossed, or, the die is cast. George was certainly up on his
Roman history.
Dear Mark,
Isn't there the same amount of ways to roll a seven, as
there are six and eight? Am I mistaken? Steve J.
Here's a secret: the casino isn't in the business of giving away money.
For that reason, the payoff on a six or eight is 7:6 though the true
odds are 6.2 to 1, giving the casino an advantage over you of 1.52%.
As has been pointed out to me, Steve, dice have six sides, each with a
different number of spots from one to six. With two dice, there are 36
possible results when rolling them (six ways one die can fall times six
ways the other can fall, 6 x 6 = 36). Result: six ways to roll a seven (1 + 6,
6 + 1, 2 + 5, 5 + 2, 3 + 4 and 4 + 3). Considering the 6 or 8, there are only five
ways that either can appear: for the six (5 + 1, 1 + 5, 4 + 2, 2 + 4 and 3 + 3)
and for the eight (6 + 2, 2 + 6, 5 + 3, 3 + 5, and 4 + 4). Therefore, you are more
likely to roll a seven than a six or eight. Etc., etc. down to 2 — only
one way to roll it. Now for those of you who didn't know that dice has
six sides, honestly, I wouldn't know where to begin.
Gambling quote of the week: "Don't gamble. Take all your
savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell
it. If it don't go up, don't buy it." —Will Rogers
