Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Keep in mind that the "theoretical" video poker loss has a LOT of variance, due to the necessity to hit Royals in order to keep your losses reasonable (or win).
That is, if you hit at least one Royal, you will probably come out ahead or at least close to even, and if you don't hit a Royal, you will likely lose a lot of money.
You will hit a Royal on a Jacks or Better machine once every 40,387 hands.
If you were to play $5-per-credit video poker optimally to reach Seven Star, that would be $25,000 coin-in to reach 2500 tiers (where you get the 5000 bonus tiers). That means you'll be playing 1000 hands (since it's $25 per hand).
You will do this 20 different days. That means you'll be playing 20,000 hands.
This means you have a 49.52% chance of hitting a Royal on your way to Seven Stars using this method.
A Royal would be $20,000.
Of course, hitting Royals is figured into the $46 per $10000 coin-in theoretical loss at a regular 9-6 Jacks or Better machine.
This means an expected loss of $2300 when putting in $500,000 at 9-6 JoB, which sounds great.
HOWEVER, that figures in your nearly 50% chance of hitting a Royal (worth $20,000).
Take away your approximately $9900 in "Royal flush equity", and your expected loss is now $12,200 when not hitting a Royal.
And that's assuming you run even on the rest of the payouts, which you easily can run far, far below expectation.
Sadly, it is not unrealistic for you to lose over $20k trying to get there, and even $30k if you're really unlucky.