Playing Sequential Royal Video Poker

Sequential Royal video poker offers perhaps the most substantial payoff in all of video poker. If you can manage a royal flush hand where the cards move in order from 10 (on the left) all the way through to the ace (on the right), you will have made a sequential royal flush. And that earns you an incredible 10,000 coins for every coin you bet.

Video poker is known as one of the most gambler-friendly of all games that can be played in casinos or on gambling websites. It’s very easy to play, isn’t that expensive, and can bring back pretty lucrative rewards. On top of that, there’s great variety among video poker variations.

One of the many ways that video poker manufacturers can tinker with basic video poker to change things up is to alter the pay table. The pay tables allow players to see how much they can expect to make for each winning hand.

You can find pay tables that allow for a kind of grinding style of play, such as Jacks or Better. Bonus pay tables create more of a bumpy ride, with the chances at bigger payoffs balanced with concerns about quickly blowing through your bankroll.

But in most cases, the royal flush, consisting of a 10 through ace of the same suit sits at the top of the pay table in video poker. This is the rarest hand to achieve in the entire game. If you make the maximum bet of five coins per hand, you will usually win 4,000 coins if you hit a royal flush.

In the vast majority of video poker games, it doesn’t matter how the royal flush appears on the screen. It will pay off whether the ace is first and the 10 is last, or the queen is first and the jack is last with the king in the middle, or whatever combination it might come up. All you have to do is get the five cards by the time the draw is complete.

What Makes Sequential Royal Poker Different?

Sequential Royal video poker is another matter. You will still get paid at the usual level for a royal flush achieved the old-fashioned way in this game. But you will also have an incentive to look for a royal flush that goes 10-Jack-Queen-King-Ace across the screen from left to right.

Remember that we said a royal flush achieved on a normal video poker machine will earn you 4,000 coins on a five-coin bet? That number skyrockets to 50,000 coins if you get a sequential royal flush at a Sequential Royal Poker machine. Depending on how much you wager, that can be a small fortune.
You can essentially find the Sequential Royal video poker format laid on top of any possible pay table.

The only concern might be if the pay tables you locate are discounted somewhat to account for the Sequential Royal video poker extra feature.

Remember that a sequential royal flush is an extremely rare event. If the pay table is lowered and you don’t manage that hand, you could have a hard time making a profit.

The following article will explain all there is to know about Sequential Royal video poker. We’ll look into the way that basic video poker is played then we’ll take a look at how a sequential royal flush changes the game. We’ll also discuss pay tables, payback percentages, and strategy for the game as well.

Learning How to Play Basic Video Poker

One of the other neat things about Sequential Royal video poker is that you don’t have to learn a whole new set of rules to play. If you have an ideal of how to play basic video poker, you should be fine. You just have to keep the potential of a sequential royal flush in the back of your mind as you’re playing your hands.

If you don’t have an idea of how video poker works, it’s easy enough to learn. Video poker represents one of the best possible games for gamblers found in either casinos or gambling websites.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the advantages that video poker has over other casino games:

• List Item 1Video poker can be played without any help from casino employees or scrutiny from other patrons. You don’t have to worry about etiquette or protocol that goes along with table games. You can just play at your machine without any hassles.
• Video poker requires some strategy. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just like slot machines because you can also play the slots on your own. With slots, all you can do is hope to get lucky, while video poker lets you have an impact on the outcome.
• Video poker outcomes are determined by the probability math of a 52-card deck. You can figure out how much each winning hand will show up and also calculate your payback percentage. With slot machines, you’re pretty much in the dark in those areas.
• Video poker provides competitive payback on the whole. You can expect to get more back from a session of video poker than from a session playing slots. And video poker is also very close in payback to many of the top table games.
• Video poker is an ideal game to play online. The same can’t always be said for table games, which sometimes undergo an awkward transition to online play. Video poker machines and online games at top gambling websites look and play pretty much the same.

As you can see, there’s a lot to like about video poker. Let’s walk you through the process of playing a basic hand so we can then talk about Sequential Royal video poker.

Step 1: Create Your Bankroll

The bankroll will be used to both make your bets and collect your winnings. At a video poker machine in a casino, it will come from the money you insert. If you’re playing online, you’ll need to fund an online gambling account at the website of your choice.

You will see that your bankroll is represented by units known as credits or coins. Each of these individual units will be based on the denomination you’re using. For example, if you’re playing a dime machine, each credit will be worth 10 cents.

Step 2: Make Your Bet

No matter which pay table you’re playing underneath the Sequential Royal video poker umbrella, you will have the choice of betting between one and five coins. This wager can be changed from hand to hand. Ideally, you should keep it at five coins (the “Max Bet”), for every hand you play.

The reason for doing this comes down to a non-sequential royal flush hand. We told you above that it pays 4,000 coins for a five-coin wager, or 800 to 1. But that ratio drops to just 250 to 1 if you only bet between one and five coins.

If you feel that a maximum bet on every hand is too expensive, perhaps you should find a machine (or online game) with a lower denomination. The last thing you want to happen is to hit a royal flush and get short-changed for it because you didn’t bet enough.

Step 3: Play Your Hand

Video poker is essentially a simulation of the casino and home card game known as Five-Card Draw Poker. If you’ve ever played Five-Card Draw Poker, you’ll immediately recognize the setup of video poker. Both games feature a five-card deal then a draw round where cards can be exchanged in order to improve the hand.

In the case of video poker, however, you don’t have to worry about making a hand that will beat everybody at the table. All you have to worry about is achieving a winning hand that will return you some money. Winning hands are determined by the pay table you’re playing.

Since Sequential Royal video poker can be played using just about any pay table, the threshold for winning hands might depend upon the one you’re playing. For instance, games with wild cards feature a higher threshold for winning hands because wild cards render winning hands easier to make.

But, for the most part, you’ll be striving to make the following hands when playing Sequential Royal video poker:

• 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)

The hands at the top of this list are relatively easy to make and pay the least. As you move down the list, the hands become more difficult to make and generally pay more. That dichotomy will play into the decisions you make about your video poker hands.

When you hit the “deal” button after making your wager, you’ll see five cards appear on the screen. These five cards will come from a 52-card deck created by the machine’s software and includes the same cards you would find in a standard deck. Each deal is random thanks to a random number generator inside the software.

You will take a look at those cards and try to find winning combinations. If you’re lucky, you might even have a winning hand on the deal. More likely than not, you’ll need to use the draw round to improve your hand and make it a winner.

On the draw, you get to discard cards you don’t believe are helping your hand. In their pace will come other cards from the deck which also provided your deal. The deck at this point will only have 47 cards remaining, since the five from your deal will be removed from the picture.

Let’s take a look at how this process works. Imagine you were dealt the following five cards.

There are no winning combinations in this deal. But there are several groupings of cards that can be turned into a winner with the right card or two on the draw.

For example, you have a pair of tens. This falls just shy of the pair of jacks or better winning threshold. But if you hold on to just the pair of tens, you can perhaps improve the hand to two pair, three of a kind, full house, or even four of a kind on the draw.

Another possibility for you is drawing to a straight. You already have four consecutive cards in rank with the eight through jack. With a seven or queen on the draw, you could end up with the straight.

Most enticing of all is the potential straight flush lurking in your deal. You can hold the nine, ten, and jack of diamonds and hope that you can connect two more diamonds. If not, you could end up with a regular flush with two more diamonds of any kind.

What you have to try to decide is which of these possible winning combinations is worth pursuing. You have to consider the probabilities of getting the cards you need. And you also have to take into account the potential payouts for the winning hands you’re seeking.

It always comes down to risk versus reward, as most casino games do. Ultimately, there’s one mathematically correct choice for each deal. We’ll talk more about that when we get to strategy.

In any case, you’ll make your decision by pressing the buttons underneath the cards you want to hold. If you have a hand that’s already a winner on the deal and you don’t think you can improve it, you can hold all five cards. Or you can discard all five if you don’t think you have much going for you.

Once you press the “draw” button, your discards will be replaced and your hand will be over. You’ll see any winnings that you’ve earned added to your bankroll.

If you wish to play again, you just have to repeat the steps. Or, if you want to cash out, you can do that as well. At any point, you can replenish your bankroll if you’re running low.

As you can see, the process of playing video poker isn’t hard. The process of playing it well is a little trickier, especially when it comes to a little bit of a twist like the one included in Sequential Royal video poker.

Making a Sequential Royal Flush

The royal flush is the ultimate goal of any video poker player. But with Sequential Royal video poker, there’s a special kind of royal flush that goes even further. In fact, it provides a jackpot that can’t really be found anywhere else in the realm of video poker.

A sequential royal flush is one that appears on the screen in order, based on rank, from left to right on the screen. In other words, they will look like this, using clubs as the suit in question:

As a way of contrast, here’s what a non-sequential royal flush would look like, using that same suit:

As you can see, all of the same cards are contained. It’s just a matter of how they appear on the screen. That’s what you have to be aware of when playing a game with the Sequential Royal video poker bonus included.

And what a bonus it is. A sequential royal flush pays off 10,000 coins for every coin that you bet. That makes 50,000 coins for a maximum bet, which is 12 ½ times as much as you would get for a non-sequential royal flush.

You might be able to tell, however, that achieving a sequential royal flush is not an easy thing to do. As a matter of fact, the math is quite daunting.

A regular royal flush will show up once in every 43,000 hands of video poker on average. Out of all those royal flush hands, only about 1% or so will be sequential. You’re definitely talking about a once in a lifetime experience.

Of course, you might be able to narrow that down a bit if you go all-out in search of a sequential royal flush. That would mean strategizing in such a way as to neglect other winning hands in search of this special hand at all costs. But that would likely be a costly pursuit, since your losses would be piling up much quicker than if you were playing the game normally.

If anything, you can increase your chances of hitting a sequential royal flush by just being aware of card positioning. For example, imagine you get a deal like this:

In a normal video poker scenario, you would be wise to hold on to the pair of kings. It is, on most pay tables, a winning combination. And it can easily be improved to something better.

But you might have to think twice in this scenario. Why? Because the ten, jack, and ace of clubs not only comprise three-fifths of what is needed for a royal flush, but they’re also in the proper position for a sequential royal flush.

Now, take a look at this deal:

The same cards are included here as in the previous deal. But the three cards are no longer in the position for you to go for the sequential royal flush. You would be better off in this case to hold the pair of kings and move on from there.

Issues like this won’t come up often during your Sequential Royal video poker play. For the most part, you’ll just be making decisions as you always would. After all, the opportunities to even take a long-shot stab at a sequential royal flush will be few and far between.

But you should at least keep the positioning of the cards in the back of your mind. The payoff for the sequential royal flush is so substantial that you should go for it even if it would take an extremely lucky draw to get it.

Pay Tables and Payback Percentages for Sequential Royal Video Poker

You’ll use a pay table to determine how much what the winning hands are for the game you’re playing and how much they’ll pay back. And you’ll also use it to determine how much each game offers in terms of payback percentage. The two concepts go hand in hand.

In terms of pay tables, you’ll find a bunch of different tables at your disposal when it comes to Sequential Royal video poker. That’s because the addition of the sequential royal flush can be added to just about any pay table. Having this flexibility is a bonus.

Pay tables come with a certain style of play attached to them. Some of them, like Jacks or Better, will usually allow you to play with a small bankroll for a long period of time. Others, like some of the Bonus Poker pay tables, will lead to more volatile play, with bigger swings to be expected between winning and losing.

Sequential Royal allows you to pick a pay table that suits what you’re seeking from the game. It also allows you to look for a pay table that offers the best payback percentage. Payback percentage is a measurement of how much the game will pay you back compared to what you put into it.

Most video poker games, and other gambling games for that matter, come with a built-in house edge. This is the concept that allows casinos and gambling websites, who act as the house, to stay in business. On average, gamblers are expected to lose a little bit.

The question is how much. If you can find the full-pay versions of some of the video poker pay tables below, the answer is not much at all. By full-pay, we mean that it’s the version of the game that offers the highest payback.

Most full-pay tables will bring you back over 99% payback. That means your losses, and the house edge, will come in below 1%. Such losses can be made up by bonuses earned from casino and gambling website loyalty programs.

The issue with Sequential Royal video poker is that you might have a hard time finding these full-pay tables. After all, the presence of the sequential royal flush bonus will raise payback. For that reason, many casinos and online sites might offer less than full-pay to compensate for this bonus.

How will you know? Simply enter the figures from the pay table of the machine or online game that you’re playing into a video poker calculator. The calculator will then yield the payback percentage that you can expect.

Keep in mind that payback percentage is a figure meant as an average result. Your own experience might be quite different. This is especially true if you only play Sequential Royal video poker for a short time, when either good or bad luck is much more of a factor.

Play Sequential Royal video poker for a long time and your own results will resemble the payback percentage. As a result, knowing payback percentage is much more important if you want to play the game on a regular basis. Casual players won’t have to worry about it as much.

Here are some of the pay tables you might encounter when playing Sequential Royal video poker:

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	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

Bonus Poker 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 (aces)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	40	80	120	160	200
Four of a kind (any other)	20	40	60	80	100
Full house	8	16	24	32	40
Flush	5	10	15	20	25
Straight	4	8	12	16	24
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	2	4	6	8	10
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Bonus Poker Deluxe 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	80	160	240	320	400
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Double Bonus Poker 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 (aces)	160	320	480	640	800
Four of a kind (2s, 3s, or 4s)	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind (any other)	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	7	14	21	28	35
Straight	5	10	15	20	25
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Jacks or better	1	2	3	4	5

Double Double Bonus Poker 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 aces without any 2,3,4	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four 2s, 3s, 4s without any A,2,3,4	160	320	480	640	800
Four aces	160	320	480	640	800
Four 2s, 3s, 4s	80	160	240	320	400
Four 5s through Ks	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	6	12	18	24	30
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	3	6	9	12	15
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Pair of jacks +	1	2	3	4	5

Triple Double Bonus Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	200	400	600	800	4,000
Straight flush	50	100	150	200	250
Four of a kind – aces 2, 3, 4 kicker	800	1,600	2,400	3,200	4,000
Four of a kind – 2s, 3s, or 4s A, 2, 3, or 4 kicker	400	800	1,200	1,600	2,000
Four of a kind – aces 5s – Ks kicker	160	320	480	640	800
Four of a kind – 2s, 3s, or 4s 5s – Ks kicker	80	160	240	320	400
Four of a kind – any other	50	100	150	200	250
Full house	9	18	27	36	45
Flush	7	14	21	28	35
Straight	4	8	12	16	20
Three of a kind	2	4	6	8	10
Two pairs	1	2	3	4	5
Pair of jacks +	1	2	3	4	5

Deuces Wild Pay Table

Coins/Hand	1 Coin	2 Coins	3 Coins	4 Coins	5 Coins
Royal flush	250	500	750	1,000	4,000
Four deuces	200	400	600	800	1,000
Wild royal flush	25	50	75	100	125
Five of a kind	15	30	45	60	75
Straight flush	9	18	27	36	45
Four of a kind	4	8	12	16	20
Full house	4	8	12	16	20
Flush	3	6	9	12	15
Straight	2	4	6	8	10
Three of a kind	1	2	3	4	5

Strategy for Sequential Royal Video Poker

The first thing you have to realize about learning proper strategy for Sequential Royal Poker is that you must tailor it to the pay table you’ve chosen. For example, the cards you hold and discard on a deal for Jacks or Better might not be the right choices for the same deal on Triple Double Bonus video poker.

The other thing you have to understand is that, for each pay table, there’s one correct play for each deal. You might think that trying different strategies will unlock some hidden potential. But video poker is based on math, and the math never changes.

For each possible deal that you might receive, there’s an expected value attached to it. One combination of holds and discards will unlock the maximum expected value. Any other combination will lessen that value.

Like payback percentage, this is a concept more associated with long-term play. You can get away with making an incorrect choice in the short term. After all, anything can happen on a single draw.

But if you consistently play hands incorrectly, your payback percentage will eventually suffer because of it. As a result, you have to learn the right plays to make sure you maximize your potential winnings.

Sequential Royal video poker makes that prospect a little bit tougher because you also have to keep the potential sequential royal flush in mind. Again, this won’t come up too often. But there will be a handful of deals where normal strategy might be altered by the possibility of the sequential royal flush being made.

To get a hold of all of this, you should take a few steps. First of all, decide on a single pay table that you’re going to play with regularity. This will narrow down what you have to know.

Once you do that, you can use one of the following two resources to learn perfect video poker play.

Video Poker Training Software

The best software for learning video poker will allow you to customize your instruction based on the pay table. Free software often doesn’t allow this, so you might want to spring for the kind you have to buy. It will pay off in the long run if you learn perfect strategy.

Video poker training software allows you to learn strategy through repetition. You will play deals and be faced with questions about what to hold and what to discard. The software will show you the mathematically correct plays so you can utilize that knowledge when you play for real money.

Strategy Charts

The first thing you have to do is find a chart for the pay table you’ve chosen. Once you do, you need to memorize the chart. It’s not a good idea to try and bring it with you into the casino, since management might consider it a form of cheating.

A strategy chart lists all of the groupings of cards that can come on a deal and ranks them in terms of expected value. You will look for the cards in your own hand ranked highest on the list and play them. This is another way to learn perfect play for any of the pay tables on a Sequential Royal video poker machine.

Pros and Cons of Sequential Royal Video Poker

Sequential Royal Video Poker Conclusion

Sequential Royal video poker will certainly appeal to the jackpot-seekers in the crowd. Getting 50,000 coins in one fell swoop is a mighty exciting prospect. But you might have to play the game regularly for months before one comes your way.