Royal Hunt Poker

Introduction

   

I first saw Royal Hunt at the Suncoast casino in Las Vegas in December 2015. The game plays like conventional Triple Play video poker for up to 15 credits bet. If the player makes a full five-credit bet on all three lines, then he may invoke the Royal Hunt Feature for another 15 credits. In that feature, if the player gets two to four to a royal flush on the deal, then he will get six Bonus hands on the draw.

Rules

 

1. Royal Hunt Poker is based on conventional Triple Play video poker.
2. If the player bet the maximum five coins on each line, for a total of 15 credits bet, then he may invoke the Royal Hunt feature for an additional 15 credit fee.
3. If the player gets two, three, or four to a royal flush on the deal, with the Royal Hunt feature in play, then he will get six Bonus hands. These six Bonus hands will automatically have the royal cards held from the deal.
4. In the event the player gets two sets of two royal cards in different suits, then the game will choose the two with the greater expected value for the six Bonus hands.
5. These Bonus hands are paid under a different pay table than the base three Triple Play hands.
6. The player does not need to hold the royal cards for the six Bonus hands. They are earned immediately upon the deal, regardless of how the player plays his hand.
7. The six Bonus hands are divided between three on the left side of the screen and three on the right.
8. Six decks are used for the six Bonus hands, one for each hand, with the five cards from the deal removed from each one.
9. First the three Bonus hands on the left will get replacements cards.
10. If any of these hands get more cards to a royal flush, then the corresponding hand on the right side will also get this same card.
11. If a Bonus hand on the right gets a royal card via the hand on the right, then it shall be removed from the corresponding deck for that hand.
12. The three guaranteed Triple Play hands and the six Bonus hands shall be paid according to separate pay tables.

 

Rules screens. Click on any image for a larger version.

 

Example

   

In the hand above, I was dealt four to a straight, including two to a royal flush in spades. The ten and jack of spades to the royal were automatically propagated to the six Bonus hands.

In the three Triple Play hands, one improved to a straight for a win of 20 credits.

The king of spades was drawn to the top Bonus hand on the right. It was also replicated to the same middle position in the right top hand.

The middle left Bonus hand also improved to a straight. As a Bonus hand, it paid 45 credits. The top two Bonus hands on the right improved to high pairs for a win of 20 credits each. My total win was thus 20+45+20+20 = 105 credits.

Analysis

 

This game would be a pretty difficult analysis. Since IGT was kind enough to provide the returns for each available game and pay table, I decided against analyzing the whole game. However, I was curious about the royal frequency so did work that out.

The following table shows the expected royals for each type of hand per initial hand, based on 8-5 Jacks or Better. The bottom right cell shows that the player can get 0.0074456 royals per initial hand. That is once every 1,343 initial hands on average. Conventional Triple Play poker, by comparison, has a royal every 13,390 initial hands, on average.

 

Return Summary

 

The following table shows the return for every available game and pay table, assuming optimal player strategy. This information was kindly provided to me by IGT, the game maker.

 

Strategy

 

You may use conventional video poker strategy in this game. There are some unusual pay tables, however, so you may wish to use my video poker strategy calculator to help. Be sure to base your strategy on the Triple Play pay table and not the one for the Bonus hands, which you have no control over.

External Links

 

• Discussion about Royal Hunt in my forum at Wizard of Vegas.

 

Written by: Michael Shackleford