Question of the Day - 20 February 2024

In the Downtown Grand video poker tournament, you try to scream through 500 credits in four-minute rounds. Getting through all the credits means playing at a blazing pace that very few can achieve.  At five credits per hand, that's 100 hands in the four minutes, or 25 per minute or slightly more than two seconds per hand.  

As video poker speeds are measured in hands per hour, you're talking about maintaining a pace of 1,500 hands in the 60 minutes. Lightning!

If you play at a nice relaxed pace, you'll play somewhere around one hand every 15 seconds. Count one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, up to fifteen one thousand to deal, hold your cards, draw, and deal a new hand and you'll see that one hand every fifteen seconds is pretty slow. At that pace, you'll log 240 hands per hour.

Cut that half in time and now you're starting to pick up speed. Experts say 500 hands per hour is around medium speed. 

Now cut that time in half and you're definitely fast, up at Anthony Curtis' and Bob Dancer's speed of around 1,000 hands per hour at their fastest, depending on circumstances. That's a hand of video poker every three and a half or so seconds. Deal one thousand hold one thousand draw one thousand burp deal. 

Dr. Lou Antonius, measured by Michael Shackleford, the Wizard of Odds and author of our book Gambling 102, hit 2,262 hands per hour; that's a hand of video poker every 1.59 seconds. That's faster than lightning. You can see a video here.

In the Downtown Grand tournament format, playing more hands is much more important than playing accurately. You still have to play reasonably correctly, making sure not to miss pairs or 3-of-a-kinds, but if you don’t see things like inside straights and straight-flush draws right away, the default is to hold the high cards, draw, and hit the deal button as quickly as possible.

As for playing regular non-tournament VP, accuracy is the prime consideration, but there are many others when it comes to speed.

Bob Dancer explains, "Speed depends on the machine. New well-serviced machines are fast. Some machines are set by the slot director to go only so fast. That slows things down considerably. Triple Play to Hundred Play machines also slow things down, simply because it takes time for the hands to fill in. W-2Gs slow things down."

And here's the crux of the matter, as Anthony, Jean Scott, and Dancer insist over and over. If you're playing a machine where the house has the edge, the more you play, the more you lose. True, you can always hit some big payouts, but if you don't have an edge (including comps, etc.), don't rush to give the house any more money than you must. Play Only as fast as you can be accurate.

If you do have the edge, Wyatt Earp said it best. "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." In other words, don’t get killed. Make sure you're playing correctly.