Many players wrongly assume that counting cards gives someone a big edge in a blackjack tournament. Similarly, it’s a common belief that video poker experts also have an advantage in a VP tourney. If this were true, our advice would be to learn the strategy of the game you’re playing and play as closely to perfect as possible, or even use a video poker strategy card when you play.
But perfect play isn’t the key. Tournament video poker is much like tournament slots, in that the most important element is playing fast. Very fast! In fact, many regular video poker-tournament winners play significantly below the expert level, but they have fire in their fingers.
By playing perfectly, experts who play positive-return VP schedules for profit capture fractional amounts of expected value on every hand. And over hundreds of thousands of hands, that adds up. However, tournaments are short-term affairs, so gaining minuscule amounts via strategy is worth much less than getting in extra hands. Stopping to consult a strategy card might cost you 5-10 hands, which is deadly in a tournament. In fact, many tournament experts advocate not even pausing to briefly consider a tough decision. Rather it’s better just to make the first reasonable play that comes to mind.
Understand that this speed consideration assumes that there’s a timer on the game, rather than a set number of hands. If all players are issued an equal number of credits and allowed to play until they’re all used, then speed is no longer a factor and there’s value in playing the hands as perfectly as possible. But you should do this only at the outset, which leads to the second strategy consideration: using available information.
In video poker tournaments, it’s important to gather as much information as you can, then adjust your play accordingly. As an extreme example, if you’re playing in a winner-take-all tournament and you know that someone has hit a royal flush, then you must also hit a royal to have a chance. At this point, you wouldn’t keep any hand that doesn’t have royal flush potential -- not even a dealt 4-of-a-kind. On a more practical basis, if you find your time or credits dwindling and you know you’re behind, you can adjust your play to enhance the chances of hitting something big. For example, you might keep only a single pair from a dealt 2-pair to increase the chances of making 4-of-a-kind. In these cases you’ll usually just fall farther behind, but it’s the proper strategy to employ.
Back to speed, Anthony Curtis tells of playing in slot and video poker tournaments 20 years ago where the sessions lasted 30 minutes or longer and the big favorites were the younger players who had the most stamina. Today, most formats have shorter play durations. But even in a short play, staying focused and playing fast can give you 10% more hands than the average player, which is powerful.
