Flushes Gone Wild

Introduction

Flushes Gone Wild made its debut in the summer of 2015 at four casinos in California, Washington, Michigan, and Las Vegas. The game could loosely be described as a cross between Ultimate Texas Hold 'Em, High Card Flush, and Deuces Wild.

Rules

 

1. The game is played with a standard 52-card deck.
2. Cards are ranked as in poker, except deuces are wild and may substitute for any card not already in the player's hand.
3. The only rank in this game are flushes. The more cards in a flush, the greater the ranking. If two flushes have the same number of cards, then the ranks of the individual cards in the flush shall determine the higher hand.
4. Play begins with the player making Ante and Blind wagers of equal amounts. The player may also make an optional Flush Rush side bet.
5. The player and dealer shall each receive five cards and two community cards. The dealer's cards and community cards are dealt face down.
6. After the player examines his cards, he must either fold or make a Play wager equal to two times his Ante wager.
7. If the player folds, then he loses his Ante and Blind wagers plus Flush Rush bet, if made.
8. After all players have acted, the dealer shall reveal his own five cards and the two community cards.
9. Player and Dealer shall both make their own best flush hands.
10. If the player has the higher hand, then the Ante and Play shall pay even money. The Blind bet is paid according to the margin of victory over the dealer and the pay table below. The margin of victory is defined as the number of player cards in the player's longest flush less the number of cards in the dealer's longest flush.
11. If the dealer has the higher hand, then the Ante, Blind, and Play bets shall all lose.
12. If the two hands are of exactly equal ranking, then the Ante, Blind, and Play bets shall all push.
13. The Flush Rush bet is paid based only the value of the player's cards and the pay table below.

     

Advanced Strategy

 

The following strategy was devised by Elliot Frome. According to Elliot, the cost in errors, compared to optimal strategy, using this strategy is 0.05%.

• Play all 5-card hands that are at least a 3-card Flush or contain a Deuce/Wild Card
• If the hand consists of TWO 2-Card Flushes, then:
  • Play if at least one of the 2-Card Flushes is at least K-8 High
  • Play if at least one of the 2-Card Flushes is King High and the 5th card (not part of either Flush) is at least a Queen
  • Play if Both 2-Card Flushes are at least Queen High
  • Play if one Flush is King High and the other is 10-High (or better)
  • Play if one Flush is Queen High and the other is Jack-High and 5th card is a King or Ace
  • Play if all 4 cards in the 2-Card Flushes are 10's or Higher
• If the hand consists of only ONE 2-Card Flush, then play if the 2-Card Flush is at least a K-8 High

 

Simple Strategy

 

The following is what I'll call the "simple strategy," which can be found on the rack card.

• Play all hands that are at least a 3-card Flush or contain a Deuce/Wild Card
• If the hand consists of TWO 2-Card Flushes, then:
  • Play if at least one of the 2-Card Flushes is at least K-8 High
  • Play if Both 2-Card Flushes are at least Queen High
• If the hand consists of only ONE 2-Card Flush, then play if the 2-Card Flush is at least a K-8 High

 

Analysis

 

The following table shows the probability and contribution to the return of the combined Ante, Blind, and Play wagers, based on the Elliot Frome advanced strategy above. The lower right cell shows the player can expect to lose 7.46% of one Ante bet per hand.

 

I've traditionally defined the house edge as the ratio of the expected loss to the Ante wager, which would be 7.46% in this case. However, if you feel it should be the ratio of the expected loss to the total initial amount bet, including the Blind bet, then you should divide that by the two-unit initial bet to get 7.46%/2 = 3.73%.

To compare one game against another, I prefer to use the Element of Risk, which is the ratio of the expected player loss to the total bet bet. In this case, the average final wager is 3.5043 units on average. This would make the Element of Risk 7.46%/3.5043 = 2.13%.

The standard deviation is 3.75.

I do not know the house edge for the simple strategy. My educated guess is the gain by using the advanced strategy, compared to the simply strategy, is probably very small and not worth the additional memorization effort for most players.

According to Elliot Frome, optimal strategy (unpublished) has an Element of Risk of 2.10%, 0.03% less than the advanced strategy above.

Flush Rush

 

The following return table shows the probability and contribution to the return for all possible outcomes of the Flush Rush side bet. For purposes of the "natural" wins, a deuce scored as its own suit shall not be counted as wild. For example, A-Q-10-8-6-4-2 all of hearts, would be considered a natural seven-card flush, because the deuce is not changing suits.

The lower right cell shows a house edge of 8.58%.

 

Placements

 

Following are known placements for Flushes Gone Wild. Please let me know if this information becomes out of date. It was last updated August 30, 2015.

• Little River (Michigan).
• Great American Casino (Washington -- I'm not sure which one of the three).
• Jackson Rancheria (California).
• Planet Hollywood (Las Vegas).

 

Acknowledgement

 

• I would like to thank Ryan Yee, the game inventor, as well as Scientific Games, the game distributor, for providing to me the math report by Elliot Frome for Flushes Gone Wild. This made my job much easier. The only math I did was on the Flush Rush side bet, which agreed with the math in the math report.

Written by: Michael Shackleford