My Best Royal Flush in Poker
Having a Royal flush is one of the best feelings in poker. At least it is very special when you have your first Royal flush. The reason for this is the rare chance of having a Royal flush dealt. On average you get this hand once every 649 739 dealt hands (I talk only about no limit Texas Hold'em). As you can see it can really take a long time until you get that hand. Some players will never get it. In online poker your chance is a lot better than in a casino or playing with your friends. The explanation is obvious: in an online game the average time/hand is a lot shorter than in a live game and you can play at many tables simultaneously.
So why did I say in the title "my best Royal flush"? I stopped saving my Royal flushes after having 19 of them (mostly in Hold'em and some in Omaha). It is funny, for a long time I did not get any but then they started to come like once in every month. There was a period when I had 3 of them in about 10 days.
The reason is why I have written "my best" is that it is hard to win a nice pot with a Royal flush. It makes so many draws on the board that it is difficult to build a pot with it. There is at least a straight draw and a flush draw as well, and your opponent has to have some part of the flop to come all the way to be all-in with you.
I have won some quite good pots in cash games but my best Royal flush hand appeared in a Raketherake Freeroll tournament and the way the hand was played very interesting. Let's analyze now this hand.
The blinds were 50/100 and having a more than 6 000 chip stack I had the 3rd biggest stack at the 9 handed table. I was sitting on the button with QsTs. Everyone folded to me and I thought it was the perfect chance to take the blinds. I raised to 600, the small blind folded and the big blind called. His stack was a little below 4 000. This was an interesting call from him. He played quite good until now. But why did he call? With a pocket pair of TT or JJ he would have reraised probably, while if he put me on a bluff he had the chance of going all-in and rather not see the flop. This player was also a very tight one. I decided to play the hand cautiously.
The flop was: KcJs5h. My opponent checked and I had an open ended straight draw. I had position and I was the preflop aggressor so it was a perfect flop for a continuation bet. Maybe the word semi-bluff is better, because I did not have anything at the moment but I had a straight draw to the nuts. I bet 800 into the 1 300 pot and my opponent made a very quick call. Hmmm this wm บาคาร่า made me think he had to have some piece of the flop.
The turn card was: Ks. My opponent checked again. This turn card did not make me too happy. All the signs showed me until now that my opponent had a pocket pair or a piece of the flop. It is also important to note that the pot was 2 900 and my opponent had a bit less than 2 400 left. This was not the best moment for bluffing. If he had something, he would be pot committed. He would call me now with any J or K, not even mentioning some other possible pocket pairs in hand. I was not beating any of these hands. An argument for betting here is that now I had picked up also a flush draw to my straight draw and with some luck maybe a Q or a T could also be a winner for me. I still thought it was better not to risk a large amount of my chips and I waited to see the river. I checked.
The river card hit and it was the: As. Yes! I hit my backdoor Royal flush. Now the situation had changed and I started to pray and hope that my opponent had something strong. He did not check but bet 1 200: about half of his remaining stack. Perfect! With a mediocre hand he would push all-in or check-fold. However he made a value bet in the end and wanted to induce a call from me. I put him all-in and he made a quick call. I won the hand and got to see his AhAd.
I tell you honestly I have no idea how I finished on that tournament. Still it was a very memorable hand when my Royal flush had beaten aces full of kings. Just for the record, the suits in poker are also ranked and spades are the strongest. So in this hand I even had the strongest Royal flush. When you play poker it is also very important to have your memorable moments; moments that you will always remember happily in your poker career.
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