Casino poker table games

I was watching the All Casino Action channel on youtube playing Ultimate Texas Holdem last night and his usual whining about how he can't win on UTH. It seems natural to me that the casino is going to win most of the time but I wasn't sure why since the advantage isn't that large.
Then it occurred to me that when you calculate odds you use the full spectrum of hands and most players will never hit a royal at UTH or 3CP. If you omit the royal payout from the players side, the player would be at a much larger disadvantage would he not?

Omit 5 Royals and it looks even worse.

Actually royals at 3CP are pretty common. 4 in 22,100.

That's my understanding as well. I had a similar thought when I started playing video poker. I played 9/6 Jacks or Better game at a casino I went to maybe 2-3x a year. I would buy-in for $100, play Wizard's basic strategy (99.45% or thereabouts), sit for an hour or two or three, and regularly lose the $100. Not every time, but it felt like I had regular losing $100 sessions and my less frequent winning sessions were capped at maybe $50. Seemed terribly unlucky. Then I read someone pointing out that ~2% of your return in video poker is the royal flush. So every session you don't hit a royal, it's effectively like you're playing a 97.45% game rather than a 99.45% game. I know that's not technically correct (it's always 99.45%), but it helped me to understand why the results seemed more unbalanced than the straight 0.55% house edge would suggest. So yeah, those low frequency high payout events can represent a meaningful chunk of the overall return.

Quote: duhwhat

I was watching the All Casino Action channel on youtube playing Ultimate Texas Holdem last night and his usual whining about how he can't win on UTH. It seems natural to me that the casino is going to win most of the time but I wasn't sure why since the advantage isn't that large.
Then it occurred to me that when you calculate odds you use the full spectrum of hands and most players will never hit a royal at UTH or 3CP. If you omit the royal payout from the players side, the player would be at a much larger disadvantage would he not?
link to original post

Also, although the main bet house advantage is small, everyone plays the trips bet and many play the progressive. Multiply the combined house edge against every hands wager and the theorical loss starts to add up fast.


ZCore13