A reader wrote recently to ask me about a wrinkle she’d seen on video poker games, a little attraction that’s been around for quite a long time, but isn’t always available in every casino.
“What can you tell me about Sequential Royals?” she wrote. “I saw it on both quarter and dollar machines, and it was a 50,000 coin jackpot. So that’s $12,500 on quarter games, which is what I play. Usually royals are $1,000, but I guess the sequentials don’t come up that often. How much is this worth?”
The Sequential Royals jackpot is awarded for a royal flush that appears on the screen with a 10 in the left-hand position, then progressing toward the right with Jack, Queen, King and Ace in order. There are 120 possible ways to order a royal flush, so a royal in sequence is pretty rare. According Michael Shackelford on his wizardofodds.com site, Sequential Royals adds 0.23 percent to a game’s payback percentage.
That still leaves nice odds, if the rest of the pay table is left intact. If a casino offers 9-6 Jacks or Better without Sequential Royals, the return with expert play is 99.54 percent. With Sequential Royals, it rises to 99.77 percent. Obviously, you’d choose the game with the feature.
But if the choice is between 9-6 Jacks or Better without the feature, and 8-5 Jacks or Better with Sequential Royals, it’s another matter. Lowering the full house return to 8-for-1 and flush return to 5-for-1 leaves the 8-5 game with a 97.30 percent return at its base, and the sequential feature brings that up only to 97.53.
You’re better off with a full pay table than with a short pay table with Sequential Royals.