Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
What you say is true, but If i have three high cards to a royal (so that pairing any high card will give me my money back) I would drop the pair to draw to the royal.

Example:

As Ks Js Jh 3c I would gladly hold the three spades in this example. I'm not playing this hand to get a pair. I'm playing this hand to get a royal or even a straight or a flush is better than a pair of jacks.
To each his own, but this is definitely not optimum strategy. At 8/5 Bonus Poker the expected return on the pair of jacks is about 1.53 bets where the expected return on the 3-card royal is about 1.41 bets. If you routinely hold these 3-card royals over the high pairs you are doing two things, knocking your royal odds down from about 40,000 down to under 34,000....but you are giving up EV in return. You are not getting the full value of the 99.166% return with optimal strategy.