You're welcome. I can assure you that Boz does, in fact, play in casinos. He has done it at least once because I have seen him do it once. We may or may not have also discussed stuff related to casinos via PM.
I understand that you don't play that Progressive and nor would I. I'm simply pointing out that the theoretical one card sequential hold v. dealy flush would theoretically cost you a lot.
You would clearly play it because you want to hit the Sequential Royal, but our point of departure is what you would be willing to sacrifice in order to do that. You said that you don't play that machine because it is a worse paytable than the one you would otherwise play. It's the same concept. From an expected value standpoint, playing a worse paytable and making a suboptimal hold are really no different. You could calculate the return based on what would be your, "Playing strategy," if you wanted to do something that is both exhaustive and relatively pointless.
By extension, you could argue that people play any VP game to, "Hit a Royal," but doing a strategy to maximize Royals at the expense of all else would result in an insanely bad return.
Anyway, there's a point, and I don't know what it is, where that goofy game can theoretically become better than 8/5 Bonus. That only happens if you play it right, though, which I'm sure would have nothing to do with throwing away flushes to keep one royal card in the right position. In my example, the progressive would have to be:
(25 - 2.35315) = x * .000000233603379
22.64685 = x * .000000233603379
22.64685/.000000233603379 = x
96945729.5393 = x
Thus, it would have to be at nearly 97 million dollars before that would become the correct hold. That's holding a Jack, of course, which also happens to be the most favorable lone card in the most favorable possible situation that you could be holding.***
***Holding the Jack with 2-3-4-6 is technically better by EV, but I am not considering it, "Better," because there is an additional hand that it would be better to keep, namely, 2-3-4-6 and throwing away the jack, again, unless the progressive were high enough.