Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker Guide
Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker creates excitement for online video poker with a jackpot that continues to rise until someone can hit the hand needed to win it. That hand is a royal flush involving diamonds only. It gives players something to shoot for that will earn them more single-hand winnings than other games.
Video poker is one of the most popular of all casino games. One of the reasons it has progressed in recent years is the boom in games that are meant only for online play. It gives those playing at top gambling websites the feeling that they’re getting something that they can’t acquire in the casino.
Creative video poker game makers have come up with a myriad of ways to change up the game. These variations usually keep the basic of rhythm of play as developed first by Jacks or Better. But games like Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker toy with the pay table somewhat so that video poker players have to come up with a different strategy.
Diamonds Are Tops
In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, the new twist is a progressive jackpot added to the pay table. For those who don’t know, a progressive jackpot continually rises as players play the game. Once someone finally does what is needed to win the jackpot, it resets at its lowest level and the process starts all over again and it continues to rise back up.
As for Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, you can probably tell by the name which hand is the trigger for the progressive. If you can achieve a royal flush with diamonds as the suit, you’d take home the top prize. What that prize might be depends on how long it’s been since somebody has hit it.
Usually, the progressive jackpot is based on a certain group of players. For example, it might be all the players using Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker at a specific gambling website. No matter what the case might be, you should always be watching closely to see where that jackpots stands.
Ups and Downs
Whenever a progressive jackpot is involved, video poker game makers have to find ways to lessen payback elsewhere on the pay table. If they didn’t, you’d be able to beat the game and consistently earn profit if you played it long enough. In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, the discount comes on the full house and flush hands, at least when compared to full-pay Jacks or Better.
These are hands that come up much more often than any kind of royal flush. Since that’s the case, you have to realize that there will be times when you’re playing Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker that your bankroll will droop. You have to have the patience to play for however long it takes to hit the diamond royal flush so that the progressive can make up for what you might be losing along the way.
In the following article, we’ll tell you all there is to know about this interesting variation known as Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker. We’ll explain how to play video poker in general and go into the unique nature of this game’s pay table. On top of that, we’ll talk about what you can expect in terms of payback and also how you can play the game with expert strategy.
Why Online Gamblers Love Video Poker
Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker is one of many games that players can enjoy at online gambling sites. Of course, you can also play video poker in the casino; most establishments have entire sections devoted to the game. It’s a popular form of entertainment, and there are many reasons for that.
If you’re playing video poker for the first time, you might be deceived by how simple it is. You might not even realize all of the benefits it offers you, both directly and when you compare it to other casino games. It’s the perfect blend between the self-contained nature of slot machines and the strategy of table games.
In fact, many gamblers will play nothing else when they’re at a casino or a gambling website. They know all of the advantages that video poker can bring to players. Here are just a few.
- Video poker is a one-person game. For many people who get a bit nervous about doing the right thing when they gamble and not offending other players, this is a real boon. You can play at your own pace with whatever strategy you choose and not have to worry about other players.
- Video poker comes in many different varieties. As we’ve already said, Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker gives you one twist on basic play. Look around in casinos and on gambling sites and you’ll find dozens upon dozens of video poker games, all with their own little twist or special feature, so that game play never has to get boring for you.
- Video poker can be learned very quickly. To the novice gambler, some table games can seem confusing and impenetrable, which might dissuade you from trying them. But video poker can be learned in minutes even if you have no background in poker whatsoever.
- Video poker is a game where strategy matters. Many people are turned off by the mindlessness of simply spinning slot machine reels over and over without having any chance to affect the outcome. With video poker, the decisions you make have a bearing on whether you win or lose.
- Video poker is up-front about your chances. Again, it compared favorably to slot machines in this respect, as slots don’t reveal what your chances are of making winning spins. Because video poker uses the concept of a standard deck of cards, you can figure out probabilities for making winning combinations.
- Video poker offers some of the best payback in the casino world. Many video poker games, including Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, give you the chance to not only limit the house edge but also, in some cases, eliminate it. That is a rarity in the gambling world and shouldn’t be taken for granted.
- Video poker is an example of a casino game that plays out smoothly online. When you play video poker at a top gambling site, you’ll see something that looks just like what you would see in a casino. Gameplay is exactly the same as well.
As you can see from this list, games like Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker have a lot to offer. If you already know how the game works, you can move on to where we talk about the specifics of Royal Diamonds Progressive. But if not, you should read on for a step-by-step indoctrination into the game.
How to Play Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker
Step 1: Building Your Bankroll
To play video poker for real money, you need to first have a bankroll in place. This will be the source of your bets and the place where your winnings are collected.
If you want to play an online game like Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, you first have to sing up with the site you’re going to use. You’ll also have to fund a gambling account. You can do this with credit cards, e-payment systems, or even, in some cases, cryptocurrency.
However you choose to fund that account, the money you allot for video poker will be broken down into units. These units, sometimes called credits or coins, will tie into the denomination that you’re playing. For example, if you’re playing with a 25-cent denomination, one credit will be worth 25 cents, two credits will be worth 50 cents, and so on.
Step 2: Make Your Bet
In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, it sets up like most standard video poker games in that it lets you bet between one and five credits in one-credit increments (in other words, no half-credit bets). You can make the same bet every time. Or if you want to do so, you can change up your bet each time.
Many novice players like to change the bet up each time in an effort to time when they are going to win. For example, if they’ve been betting one coin per hand and have lost several hands in a row, they might then decide to increase the bet. But as we’ll show you in a bit, your chances of winning specific hands have nothing at all to do with what’s come before.
The best way to play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker is to wager the max bet of five coins every single hand. That will open up the best payback for the royal flush. Take a look:
- Royal flush with hearts, clubs, or spades: 250 to 1 payback for one through four coins bet, 800 to 1 payback for five coins bet
- Royal flush with diamonds: 300 to 1 for one through four coins back, progressive jackpot for five coins bet
We can’t stress enough how important it is for you to make the max bet if you want to play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker regularly and have a chance at winning in the long run.
By betting less than five coins, you are essentially reducing your potential payback. And that’s not to mention how disappointing it will feel if you don’t bet the max and you hit a royal flush, which would bring you less for that single hand than you otherwise could have.
If you are planning on a modest gambling budget and want to play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker for a long period of time, we suggest that you reduce the denomination if at all possible. This will keep your betting money down while still keeping your payback rate high. If you reduce the coins that you bet instead, you’ll be lessening your jackpot changes and limiting your overall payback potential.
Step 3: Play Your Hand
A hand of video poker looks a lot like a hand of the card game known as Five-Card Draw. If you’ve ever played Five-Card Draw Poker, you probably know how it works. Five cards are dealt, you can hold or discard, then there’s a draw to replace any discards. Video poker works the same way towards the same goal, which is building the best possible poker combination out of your five cards when the hand is over.
But Five-Card Draw also requires betting skill, since you can sometimes win the pot with a bad poker hand if you can outsmart other players with bluffs. That isn’t the case with video poker. Betting is over once the hand begins, then all you have to worry about is forming one of the winning combinations on the pay table.
In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, here are the combinations that you’ll be trying to achieve:
- Pair of jacks or better
- Two pair
- Three of a kind
- Straight (five cards of consecutive rank, like 3-4-5-6-7)
- Flush (five cards of same suit)
- Full house (three of a kind and two pair in the same hand)
- Four of a kind
- Straight flush (straight with five cards of same suit)
- Royal flush (ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of the same suit)
- Royal flush with diamonds
When you look at this list, you’ll see that they’re listed in terms of their poker rankings, from worst on top to best on the bottom. These rankings are based on the likelihood of you achieving these combinations in a typical five-card hand. The hands with the highest rankings pay back the most.
In other words, you’ll be rewarded the most for the hands that are the most difficult to achieve. That little dichotomy will be at the heart of all decisions that you make playing Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker. You’ll have to know when to go for the high-paying hands and when to settle for some payback, even if it’s not a lot, instead of taking a loss.
The Deal
Earlier, we told you about how it’s a mistake to try to time your bets based on what has come before in previous Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker hands. Knowing how the deal and draw works will help you understand why this is the case. And it all comes down to random number generator (RNG) programs that drives video poker play.
The RNG will determine which five cards you receive on the deal out of 52 possibilities, the same cards that can be found in a standard deck. It also determines, once the deal is done, which of the 47 cards you’ll receive on the draw (if you need any). With this in place, there will never be a time when any kind of patterns or trends form during Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker gameplay.
The Decision
You’ll look at the five cards you’ve been dealt and decide which to hold (if any) and which to discard (if any). There might be times when you choose to hold all five because you’ve already got a winning combination that you don’t think can be improved. And there will also be times when you throw all five cards back because there isn’t anything there worth keeping.
The cards you hold will be part of your final hand. And any you discard will be replaced by others on the draw. Always keep in mind, as you’re making your determinations, that the draw will come from a deck with 47 cards remaining and that you can’t get any of the cards you received on the deal in the draw.
How do you make your decision? Think of the following two factors on every hand:
- What chances do you have of forming any winning combinations based on what you already have and might keep and what remains in the deck?
- What is the potential payback that you might receive from these combinations?
In other words, maximizing your payback in Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker will require more than just making as many winning combinations as possible. It’s also about occasionally hitting some of the higher-paying hands when the potential is there to do so. Those bigger wins will be necessary from time to time.
Sample Royal Diamonds Progressive Decision
Let’s imagine that you were playing a hand of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker and received the following five cards on the deal:
As you can see from the list of winning combinations we provided you with above, this is not a five-card hand that will earn your payback as it is. But there are many potential winning combinations that can be achieved on the draw. You just have to decide which ones you want to pursue.
Here are some of the ways that you can approach this hand:
- Hold the pair of sevens and draw three cards. This might be the safest way to play this hand in terms of coming out with some sort of winning combination. For example, you could end up with two pair, three of a kind, a full house, or four of a kind.
- Hold the four diamonds and draw one card. With four diamonds already in place, you would need just one more to complete the flush. You could also eke out a winning combination if you were to draw a second king.
- Hold the seven, eight, and 10 of diamonds and draw two cards. With the three diamonds all very close in rank, you’d have an outside shot of drawing a straight flush. There would be many other winning hands still within play as well, such as two pair, three of a kind, a straight, and a flush.
- Hold the 10 and king of diamonds and draw three cards. While there are many cards you could draw in this scenario to get you a winning combination, your real goal would be the diamond royal flush. That would put you in line for the progressive jackpot in Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker.
Once you’ve played video poker for a while, decisions like this will come quickly to you, even on tricky hands like this. You’ll find that most hands aren’t this complicated, and the choices are more defined. In any case, you’ll get to the point if you play regularly where you can play several hands of video poker per minute.
The Draw
To make your decision known, you’ll click on the icons (or touch the screen) for the cards you want to hold. If you don’t do anything to a card, that means you want it discarded. Make sure you have your choices in order, then you can activate the draw.
On the draw, the cards that you’ve discarded will immediately be replaced by others from the deck. That will complete the hand and your bankroll will be credited if you’ve won. (Your bankroll will have been debited by the amount of your bet at the beginning of the hand.)
Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker can continue in this vein for as long as you wish to play and have the credits to bet. You just have to repeat the steps above. Or you can quit at any time and make a request from the website you’re using to withdraw any funds you have.
What Is a Diamond Royal Flush?
Just so you’re clear as you play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, the hand you’ll be trying to achieve to earn the progressive jackpot is a royal flush consisting of all diamonds. In other words, you’ll be hoping that these five cards show up, in any order, on the screen:
To be clear, other royal flushes with spades, clubs, or hearts still pay back the typically high amount as you’ll see in the pay tables. But the diamond royal is really the crux of what makes Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker a little bit different than the average video poker game.
Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker Pay Tables
Searching out the pay table is one of the first things you do with any video poker game. It will tell you, at the basic level, how much you’ll get paid for each winning combination based on how much you’ve bet.
But it will also be the key to your strategy in term of your holds and your discards. And once you know how to compare a pay table to the baseline pay tables like Jacks or Better, you’ll also be able to tell what style the game will be in terms of volatility. The pay table is basically the most crucial piece of information at your disposal.
Here is the pay table that you’ll see most often when playing Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker:
Royal Diamonds Progressive Pay Table
| Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond royal flush | 300 | 600 | 900 | 1,200 | Progressive |
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 40 |
| Flush | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| Three of a kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
First, here’s a note on how to read this pay table if you’re new to video poker. It’s just a matter of connecting the rows to the columns. For example, imagine that you made a five-coin wager and managed a four of a kind on the hand; how much would you win?
If you follow the row for “four of a kind” over to the column for “5 coins,” you’ll see that the number “125” appears. That’s letting you know that you’ll win 125 coins. Minus the five-coin wager, you’ll get a profit of 120 coins for that hand.
As we said, without the context of some baseline pay table, it’s difficult to see how the Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker pay table stacks up. With that in mind, here is the highest-paying pay table for Jacks or Better, which is the most common of all video poker pay tables.
Jacks or Better Pay Table
| Coins/Hand | 1 Coin | 2 Coins | 3 Coins | 4 Coins | 5 Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1,000 | 4,000 |
| Straight flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| Four of a kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full house | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| Three of kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two pairs | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
There are obviously a lot of similarities between the Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker and the Jacks or Better pay table. And the obvious difference is that the Royal Diamonds Progressive gives you the extra progressive payback for the diamond royal flush. In Jacks or Better, all royal flushes pay off the same amount.
You might think based on this that the Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker pay table is superior. But if you take a look at the middle of that pay table compared to Jacks or Better, you’ll see two big differences. Take a look.
| Hand/Table | Jacks or Better | Royal Diamonds Progressive |
|---|---|---|
| Full house | 9 to 1 | 8 to 1 |
| Flush | 6 to 1 | 5 to 1 |
You can see that Jacks or Better has the advantage on both of those hands. And those are hands that will appear a lot more often when you play video poker than any type of royal flush. This raises the volatility level of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker.
What does volatility mean? Well, think of it in terms of ups and downs as you watch your bankroll throughout play. The more frequent and more severe of those ups and downs, the higher the volatility.
Because of the volatility of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, you might have to come equipped with a bigger bankroll if you want to play for a long time, as opposed to if you were playing Jacks or Better. But there is a positive to higher volatility. Your chances for quick, significant payoffs will be higher as well, which might be a tradeoff that you’re more than willing to make.
Royal Diamonds Progressive Payback
If you’re going to be a hardcore video poker player, you need to understand what payback percentage means. This is the most important metric in terms of your hopes of making a profit. It will measure how much you can expect to return from your bankroll after playing the game.
Remember that payback percentage is a long-term prospect. In other words, if you only play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker for a little while, you can’t expect your payback to hew exactly to the given percentage, because of luck. But after you’ve played thousands of hands, your bankroll should look something like the payback percentage told you it would, which is based on hand probabilities and pay table amounts.
In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, payback percentage is a malleable thing. That’s because it will all depend on where the progressive jackpot stands. If there were no jackpot, the pay table would provide payback of 97.3%, which means the following:
- $1,000 bankroll = $973 remaining ($27 loss)
- $10,000 bankroll = $9,730 remaining ($270 loss)
- $100,000 bankroll = $97,300 remaining ($2,700 loss)
As you can see, the payback percentage without the jackpot won’t pay back enough to stop you from losing a decent amount of money along the way. Even factoring in possible rewards earned as you play at gambling websites probably wouldn’t prevent an overall loss. You should be shooting for payback of at least 99% if you want to offset the house edge.
But the progressive jackpot earned from the diamond royal flush changes all that. In most cases, you should expect the lowest limit to be a payback of 14,000 coins, which would raise the payback to around 98.57%. At some point, the jackpot in Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker will rise to a point where it eclipses the point where a long-term profit is a realistic goal.
This proves the volatility of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker. Without the jackpot, your bankroll will sag, and you’ll be headed in the wrong direction. But one diamond royal flush will go a long way of pushing you into positive numbers.
Strategy for Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker
Whatever the listed payback percentage for a specific video poker game, the assumption is that the percentage is only achievable if you can play with perfect strategy. In other words, you would have to make the right decisions every single time in terms of what to hold and discard. Every mistake that you make will be responsible for lower expectations on payback.
If you get lucky in a short session, you can certainly get away with making the incorrect decisions now and again. But after a while, the luck will start to turn the other way. It’s all about making the right choices according to the math and what sequence of holds and cards bring the highest value to the hand.
In the case of Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, that can get a bit tricky because of the progressive jackpot. Take a look at the following hand:
In most video poker games, the choice here would be pretty obvious. The smart thing to do would be to hold the two pair. You’d be locking in payback of at least 2 to 1 (on typical Jacks or Better-style pay tables), and you’d still have a chance to draw to a full house.
But at some point, the progressive jackpot in Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker might rise to a level where you might have to rethink that play. Notice that you have three cards (ten of diamonds, jack of diamonds, queen of diamonds) that would comprise the diamond royal flush you’d need to win the jackpot. You might have to go for that opportunity when you get it, even if it means giving up the 2 to 1 payback and taking the chance of losing your bet.
How do you take all that into account when you play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker and try to do so with perfect strategy? Trying to figure it out all on your own is a mistake. It’s better to get some help.
Learning Strategy for Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker
The first thing you should do if you’re settling in to play Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker is to locate where the jackpot stands. At that point, you should input the figures into a video poker calculator. If you then enter some sample hands like the ones above, you can start to see at what point you might have to start going for the diamond royal flush a bit more aggressively.
After that, we also suggest that you search out some resources that will help you learn what to do on all basic hands. This will be easy to do because the Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker is essentially the same as Jacks or Better, with the exception of the progressive jackpot. As such, instruction should be relatively easy to find.
Take a look at what we consider to be the two best methods for learning proper strategy when playing Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker:
Video Poker Training Software
With video poker training software, you can learn basic video poker as you go. That’s because it lets you play sample hands with nothing at stake. You can get use to holding and discarding, betting, and the overall rhythm of play.
As far as learning specific strategy for Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker, you just have to input the pay table amounts. When you’re faced with decisions about what to hold and discard in your practice hands, the software will tell you what the right plays should be. In that way, you’ll learn all the right moves for when you decide to play at a gambling website for real money.
Strategy Charts
If you’re already someone who understands how to play video poker and wants a quicker path to learning Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker strategy, a strategy chart could be for you. You just have to memorize all of the listings on the chart. Once you have that done, you’ll have perfect strategy already locked away in your brain.
A strategy chart lists all of the possible card combinations that you might be dealt that provide some value heading into the draw. These combinations will be ranked from most valuable to least valuable. Once you know that, you’ll be able to spot the cards that you have in your own hands of video poker that you should be playing.
Royal Diamonds Progressive Video Poker Pros and Cons
- The progressive jackpot gives you an opportunity for a significant one-time payoff.
- That one-time payoff can actually tip the balance in your favor when it comes to making a profit.
- The special payback for the diamond royal flush comes without an extra bet necessary.
- Much of the payback is tied up in the royal flush hands, which are extremely difficult to achieve.
- Your bankroll will struggle to rise when you don’t hit one of the big hands.
- Strategy gets a little tricky as the progressive jackpot rises and changes what you should be doing on certain deals.
Conclusion
Royal Diamonds Progressive video poker delivers the thrills of a progressive jackpot that can tower over what you would get in typical video poker games. When that jackpot gets to a certain level, your long-term outlook for the game is excellent as well. Just be aware a royal flush of any kind is hard to achieve, let alone one that has to be a specific suit.
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