I just made up a quiz concerning 9/6 Double Double Bonus Quick Quads. Although the quiz won’t seem too difficult, I would have personally missed one of these questions earlier this year. If you’ve learned everything you know about Quick Quads from my writing, you’ll miss the same one.
This quiz concerns dealt full houses where the 3-of-a-kinds are ‘special,’ namely 2, 3, or 4. For these ranks, normal 4-of-a-kinds and all Quick Quads pay 400, and 4-of-a-kinds with a kicker pay 1,000. Don’t be concerned with the suits. They aren’t a factor in your decisions.
For each of the following dealt full houses, all you have to decide is whether it’s correct to hold 3, 4, or 5 cards.
A. 22233
B. 22255
C. 333AA
D. 33355
E. 33344
F. 444AA
G. 44422
H. 44455
A and B: Hold five cards. In most video poker games based on Double Double Bonus, 222, 333, and 444 all have equal values. Not so in Quick Quads. The value of each 3-of-a-kind includes how easy it is to get Quick Quads. To get a Quick Quad from 222, you need to draw a pair of aces. There are only six ways you can draw a pair of aces out of the 1081 possible draws. Better to keep the full house.
C: Hold 4 cards. To get a Quick Quad from 333, you need to get a deuce and an ace. If you threw away both aces you’d have eight chances to draw a deuce and an ace out of the 1081 possible draws. While that’s an improvement over what you’d get from 222, you can do much better. Holding 333A, you have four out of 47 chances to get a Quick Quad. That’s 11.5 times as good as eight out of 1081. You also have four out of 47 chances to get threes and a kicker, which is also a higher percentage than you get just holding 333.
D: Hold 3 cards. This is a case where the cards in the pair can neither be part of a Quick Quad, nor part of a kicker quad.
E: Hold 5 cards. This is the only full house containing three 3s where you hold five cards. This is the one I just learned.
F: Hold 4 cards. Same logic as in C, only here it is a closer decision. If you just hold 444 from this hand, there are 8 ways to draw a three and an ace, but also 6 ways to draw a pair of deuces.
G: Hold 5 cards. If you missed this, shame on you! This is a Quick Quad. Too bad I couldn’t figure out a way to add sound effects to this article.
H: Hold 3 cards.
One question is: Where did I learn to hold all five cards from 33344? The answer is: The Wizard of Odds’ Video Poker Strategy Calculator . This is a valuable tool available to all of us for free. I just heard about this for the first time in early May and have been looking at the Basic Strategy Exceptions for many of the games I play.
My goal is to play each game at the 100% accuracy level. When I find a new tool that presents the data differently than other tools do, I use it to see if there is a hole in my knowledge somewhere.
This particular hand doesn’t come up too frequently. 33344 is a hand that only comes up every 108,290 hands, which is about once every 200-250 hours for me. I don’t keep a running log of the number of hours I play, but I’ve played this game a lot and probably have had the hand three or four times. I don’t specifically remember it, but prior to now I would have simply played 333, which is what my previous strategy said to do.
Some of my readers no longer feel the need to study. I truly hope I never get to that point.
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