Posts Tagged ‘poker room’
There is no way to know the exact odds of hitting a jackpot. Have you ever been in a game where someone said after the hand was over, "We would have hit the jackpot if I hadn't thrown my hand away before the flop?" That's why you can never know the exact odds of hitting a jackpot. You cannot account for the actions of all the players with mathematical certainty.
All you can know for sure is that the more players there are in the game who see every flop, especially when they're holding an ace, the more likely it is that you'll eventually hit a jackpot. On the other hand, it will take a very long time to hit a jackpot if you're in a very tight game where hardly anyone ever sees the flop, and most hands don't go past it.
The only way to know the approximate odds of hitting a jackpot is to use hindsight, and that's what I have done. The poker room managers of three different casinos have given me access to their hold 'em jackpot histories.
This is not privileged, classified, nor secret information. This information is available to anyone who cares to keep an eye on the jackpots and record how much each jackpot was when it was hit. If you also know how each jackpot dollar is distributed (75%-15%-10% or 67%-33%), you can calculate how many hands were dealt, on average, between jackpot hands.
I have ten years of statistics from three poker rooms, for a total of thirty years of hold 'em records. It turns out that the magic number is 12,500. That's how many hands it takes, on average, to hit a jackpot. This takes into account loose play, tight play, players who play every ace, players who only play aces selectively, the play of small pocket pairs and all the other variables that can't be calculated in advance.
Knowing that it takes 12,500 hands to hit a jackpot is not really the whole story. Assuming the table is full, every time a hand is dealt, there will be forty-five individual hand matchups. In a ten-handed game, all of the players at the table can match up all of their hands a total of forty-five different ways. So you can see this more clearly, I'll list for you just how each hand can match up with the others:
1. The player in the first seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of nine matchups. TOTAL: 9
2. The player in the second seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of eight matchups. TOTAL: 9+8=17
3. The player in the third seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of seven matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7=24
4. The player in the fourth seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of six matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6=30
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