Randomly Dealt Royal Flush Wins Poker Jackpot

A lucky poker player won a big jackpot at a Las Vegas casino with the rarest hand in the game. The gambler took home nearly $140,000 from the Golden Nugget Las Vegas Hotel & Casino after being dealt five random cards that resulted in a royal flush.

When it was all said and done, the unidentified player won $139,789.

As great as this sounds, it’s still a far cry from the $1.1 million jackpot a bettor won on a $7 slot machine bet back in April.

But what makes this win so special is that the player was arbitrarily dealt the five cards. The odds of that happening are enormous.

What is a Royal Flush?

Getting a Royal Flush is every poker player's dream. If you get one, you know that no one will have a better hand than yours.

A royal flush is a hand with an ace, king, queen, jack and 10, all in the same suit. It's the strongest hand you can get in poker. It beats every other hand and always wins in a showdown. People also call it the "absolute nuts" because nothing can beat it.

How Rare is a Royal Flush in Poker?

According to Upswing Poker, the chance of drawing a royal flush from a deck of 52 cards is 0.000154%.

In Texas Hold’em, figuring out the odds of getting a royal flush is a bit different because you're trying to make the best five-card hand out of seven cards, so the probability of making a royal flush in Texas Hold’em with all five community cards on the board is 0.0032%.

Texas Hold’em is considered to be the most popular variant of poker.

Pokerking.com explains it this way. In Texas Hold'em, there are 2,598,960 possible five-card hands. This includes the four royal flushes (one for each suit: Diamonds, Spades, Clubs, and Hearts).

So, the chances of getting a royal flush are four out of 2,598,960, which means you can expect to get a royal flush about once every 650,000 hands you play.

Odds of Getting a Sequential Royal Flush

A sequential royal flush is when the cards are dealt to the player in order from left to right. Gaming gurus estimate that the odds of being dealt any sequential royal are eight out of 311,875,200 or one out of 38,984,400.

Keep in mind that there are a number of variables that can come into play, including the kind of poker you are playing. How many players? What's the hand size? Is there a shared hand? Are you playing with draw? If so, what's the maximum draw, and do you perform replacement?

So, there are a lot of factors to consider when figuring out the odds of hitting a royal flush, especially a sequential royal flush.

But when you put all of that in perspective, you get the sense of just how rare what happened at the Golden Nugget really is. It was a life-changing moment against nearly insurmountable odds.

You can find out for yourself how rare a royal flush is to hit by playing online poker if you live in one of the states where it is already legal.