How Does the Statistics of Video Poker Work? Some people have written and asked about video poker statistics. Many of these questions display absolute misunderstanding of the subject. It surely is not easy to understand video poker statistics without knowing a thing about statistics science in general. Although gambling does not involve any extra complicated methods, the basic knowledge of mathematics and statistics is still required. We will try to explain some common misunderstandings at this page, but it is still advisable to gain basic knowledge before trying to learn video poker statistics.
Random Numbers First of all, many people do not understand how random numbers work and what statistical data is. Each random number, such as the value of a card dealt in video poker, is unpredictable, but knowing the limits of these numbers, video poker statistics can predict possibilities of each number to appear in the long term. There is no physical power that can force the number to change, but knowing the probability we can say that such number is more or less likely to appear than another one. Random Numbers in Video Poker: In video poker, there are no 100 percent probabilities, which means that nothing is completely sure at any given moment, but in the long term (perfectly after an infinite number of games) the numbers will approximate the predicted value. Infinity is quite a long period, and none of us will see all numbers matching their predictions, but, the more times the numbers appear, the closer the statistical data get to its prediction, so if we say that an Ace has 1/13 probability to appear, after 13,000,000 cards dealt it will surely appear about 1,000,000 times. Most probably, it will not be 1,000,000 exactly, but the error will be small enough not to take it into the account.
When we are dealing with much lower probabilities, such as 1/40,000 for a royal flush, we can not expect the statistical data to be close to the predicted value until a really-really large numbers of the games are played. Royal cycle, another term incorrectly understood by many people, is a theoretical value that describes the number of games where a royal flush is likely to appear once. In 1,000,000 royal cycles about 1,000,000 royal flushes will appear, but it does not mean that when the first cycle is over there will be 1 royal flush. There can be from 0 to 40,000 royal flushes during this cycle and no one can tell the exact number of them. Example: Let's take an example with smaller numbers. As far as the head and the tail of a coin both have 1/2 probability, the head cycle is 2 throws and the tail cycle is also 2. Does that mean that throwing a coin two times you will always get one head and one tail? Surely it does not. Even 20 throws will not produce exactly 10 heads and 10 tails. It requires much larger numbers to approximate the predicted value.
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