After years of playing Video Poker, I found that the following tips are very helpful to hitting a Royal Flush, so I want share these tips with you here. I hope these helpful hints will get you closer to the fortune of hitting a royal flush.

Finding the best payout machines.

Always look for machines that pay 9 to 1 for a full house (45 with 5 coins) and 6 to 1 for a flush (30 with 5 coins). However four-of-a-kind bonus machines if paying 7 or 8 to 1 for a full house (35 or 40 with 5 coins) and 5 to 1 for a flush (25 with 5 coins), such as four aces paying 80 to 1 (400 with 5 coins) and four 2s, 3s or 4s paying 40 to 1 (200 with 5 coins), are also acceptable. You need these high payouts to keep you playing, as the real key to hitting a royal is playing a large number of hands. Stay clear of machines that only pay 1 to 1 for two pair or don’t pay for jacks or better. Although double bonus and double-double bonus machines can be good if you can get some four-of-a-kinds, otherwise with the two pair 1 to 1 payout, these machines will take your money quickly. Also stay clear of dueces wild machines as the payout is so low that unless you hit four dueces you won’t be playing long.

Avoid adhering to popular myths.

There are a lot of myths surrounding video poker machines. A couple of these are:

• This machine just hit, it won’t hit again. Untrue. It’s a machine. It doesn’t know that it just hit. In these machines the cards are shuffled every thousandth, or less, of a second. An event needs to take place for the cards to stop shuffling. That event is you pressing the deal button or putting in maximum coins. If you just left a machine and someone else hits on it, it doesn’t mean you would have hit. Chances are you would not have caused the deal at the exact millisecond they did.
• The hopper is full; I can hear the coins falling into the bin. It must be ready to hit. A machine may not hit for weeks or months. It depends on how it’s been played and whether it’s been played with max. coins, etc.

There are many popular myths. Just use common sense. Remember these are machines, and they cannot even be tightened by the casino, although I sometimes wonder. It is all just random shuffling and dealing at a precise millisecond.

Know how the machine plays.

Knowing exactly how the machine deals has always been helpful to me. When the machine deals, it deals five cards behind with five cards in front, which are the cards that you see on the screen first. When you throw away a card in the second position, say, the card that was already dealt right behind it is the card that will show up. The next hand has nothing to do with the previous hand, as, like I said before, the cards are shuffled every millisecond.

Whenever possible, always leave the hand open for a royal.

This is singly the most important factor in hitting a royal. What this means simply is that you can’t hit a royal if you are holding cards that don’t fit into a royal. The strategy that I have used has been if I have three to a royal, anything else in the hand goes except in the case of a three of a kind, although I imagine there have been royals behind some of them. Here are some of the hands I would sacrifice for three to a royal: Low pair, jacks or better, two pair, four to a flush and four to a straight. If dealt only three high cards with two to a royal, hold two to a royal. If dealt only two high cards of different suits, hold only one card; you choose. I tend to hold the higher card. At all costs throw away the odd card in four to a royal. Unless maybe you get dealt a straight flush to the king. I have heard of people throwing away the nine in a straight flush to the king and catching the ace. I would tend to keep the straight flush.

Always play maximum number of coins.

I know this can be difficult to do at times. If you are going to go out and gamble on video poker machines, you should only play what you can afford to lose, if you lose. I have found that a good number of coins to start off with is between 300 and 400. If you can’t keep playing very long on that many coins, then chances are you should stop. There are times I should have followed that advice myself.

I hope that these tips help you in your endeavor towards the royal. But most of all, have fun playing, because that’s what it’s really about. If you’re not having fun, why play?