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Royal Flush

The Royal Flush.

Is it the greatest hand that ever graced a poker player's sweaty palms? Statistically speaking, any straight flush is equally as impressive as the royal. But it's the Royal flush that outranks them all. And it doesn't matter who you are, the rush of adrenaline that accompanies hitting the best hand in poker is extremely hard to supress. Let's look at why.

How rare is the royal flush? There are 2,598,960 possible combinations of poker hands you can make when playing any one round of poker. Out of those possible combinations, there are only 40 possible ways to make a straight flush in poker. That's only a 0.0015% chance to complete your straight flush. And just think - only 4 out of those 40 ways are royal flushes. It's a staggering amount of luck, chance, fate or whatever you want to call it to complete a royal flush.

The math is pretty fascinating when figuring probabilities for hands. There is a great article outlining the math with regard to hand probabilities by Brian Alspach. A simple version can be found on Wikipedia.

It can't be beat. And odds are that when you hit a royal flush and someone else is also acting aggressively in the hand they have a very strong hand like a lesser ranking flush, three of a kind, a high ranking straight, or maybe even a full house. You will get paid off well if your opponent has any of these hands. The key to successfully playing a royal flush is knowing your table image and the other players in the hand. Are they very aggressive? Let them hang themselves by allowing them to push the action until the end. Are you a tight player? You shouldn't play too aggressively, you will drive opponents away. By all the poker gods, though, get paid something. Do not let your fantastic hand return you nothing, as professional player Tony G does in the video below.

Here is the worst way possible to play a royal flush:

Royal flush knock out in the 2007 World Series of Poker (how is this hand so ho-hum??):

And here is an exciting Royal flush vs Four aces at the 2008 World Series of Poker:

Odds of a poker hand resulting in a royal flush vs four aces? 1 in 2.7 billion. Wow.