Royal Flush

Aug 17
Hitting a Royal Flush in Texas Hold’em is a very rare thing. Flopping the Royal Flush is even harder. On average hitting a royal flush on your first five cards will happen 1 in 649,740 hands, but assuming you are starting off with two of the cards needed then the odds are 1 in 19,600 of hitting the royal flush on the flop, something I saw for the first time yesterday after playing online poker for about 6 years. As luck would have it, I was on the wrong end of the hand. I started with AK and after a player raised to $6, I re-raised to $15 and got called. The flop was A K 10 all diamonds. I had hit top two pair and my opponent bet $15. My thought was that if he hit a flush he most likely would have checked not wanting me to fold, but his bet was not so big that I thought he was trying to get me to fold, so I figured he thought he had the best hand. Since he only called my re-raise pre-flop I figured he could have the straight with no diamond but AQ or AJ seemed the most likely possibility perhaps with the Q or J being a diamonds. If the was the case then he would have 9 outs for a flush and 3 more for a straight for a total of 12 outs giving him about a 45% chance of winning, so I went all in and he called flipping over the Q J diamonds for the Royal Flush.




Things did not get much better after that. A few hand later I had AA. From early position a guy raised to $4, I then re-raised to $10, the BB called and the original raiser called. The Flop came 10 J 2. The BB checked the original raiser but $10 into a $30 pot and I raised to $30, BB folded and the other guy called. I was fairly certain I had him beat at this point and thought he either had KQ hoping to hit and overcard or a straight, or he had A J. The turn was a 7 he checked and I put my last $60 in and he called flipping over 8 9 for a straight on the other end. I never really thought of this as a possible hand for him because of the early position raise and then calling a re-raise pre flop.


The next time I had AA I raised to $6 and had one caller. The flop had three unconnected low cards with two diamonds. I bet $10 and he went all in and I called. He flipped over AQ diamonds and hit the flush to beat me.


Then I had two similar hands once with 4 4 and once with 6 6, both times I flopped a set ended up all in after the flop and ended up against someone who flopped a bigger set.


The last hand of the day I had JJ. The first guy to act raised to $4 I re-raised to $10 two guys called the $10 then the original raiser went all in for over $100. I figured he was trying to take the pot right there with out seeing the flop so most likely had a middle pair or maybe AK, either way the right move was to call unless I thought one of the two other guys had me beat which I did not, so I called the other two folded and he flipped over 8 8 making me a huge favorite to win, but it was not to be, he hit a 8 on the flop and I lost yet another big pot.


At the end of the day I was back down to $2125 and I can not believe the number of times I have lost starting with AA over the last week. The last 20 times I have been dealt AA I think I have won the blinds about five times won small pots about five time and lost about 10 times.


I should be winning about 80% of the time I see the flop but instead I have been losing about 60% and usually the losses are bigger pots then the wins.


I think I will take a day off and then move back to Doyle’s Room for a couple days because my luck at the Rush tables has not been good and I do not want to keeping playing there feeling frustrated because it could have a negative impact on my play and I do not want to compound the losses with bad play.