The other day I was dealt an exciting hand that got me thinking about longshots - both the kind you want to hit and the kind to avoid - so this lesson is the result.
I was dealt the Ace and Queen of spades as my pocket cards in a game of Hold 'em and, as you hopefully know by now, it's a pretty good way to start. But it got even better when the flop came: Ks, Js, 9d. Now I had a 4-card Royal Flush and needed to catch only the 10 of spades to complete it. "Only" is a relative word, of course because the odds against me catching the 10 of spades on the turn was 1 in 47 (I've seen 5 cards to this point, so 47 are left and only one of them is the 10 of spades). Of course, any 10 would make a Straight and any spade would make a Flush, but darn it, I wanted the Royal!
My interest in completing the Royal was not just ego-driven, because the casino where I was playing offers a bonus to anyone who finishes a hand with a Royal. So, not only was I guaranteed to win the pot for the hand (you don't even have to worry about a tie with a Royal), but I'd also get $500 thrown in as well. I knew the odds against me making it were huge, I've drawn to enough 4-card Royals at Video Poker to know that, but at least here I had two shots at it - one on the turn and one on the river. Because it wouldn't matter when I got the card, only if I got it, I started to think about, first, what I was going to buy with the $500 (I 'm an optimistic rascal) and second, what kind of expected value is added to our poker hands by such bonuses?
(Source: GameMaster)
