Gaming Guru

Ask The Slot Expert

Hello John,

Thanks for your great advice. May the New Year bring you good health, prosperity and peace.

Now down to business. In the American Casino Guide 2000, there is an interview by Steve Bourie with a guy who claims to earn in excess of $80,000 per year playing quarter VP. He also claims to play about 1,000 hands per hour if playing on one machine or 1,400 hands per hour if playing two! Whew. I practice Double Bonus almost daily on Bob Dancers Win Poker and if I go beyond 750 hands per hour my accuracy drops off considerably.

So my questions are: does accuracy become somewhat less important at very high speed and can you really do $80,000+ on quarters?

All The Best,
Bill

Dear Bill,

Thanks for the kind words about my tips.

To answer your first question, accuracy becomes more important the more hands you play. It doesn't matter whether you play more hands because you're playing faster or playing two machines at a time or just playing longer or more often. As you play more and more hands, your actual payback will tend to home in on the theoretical payback for the strategy you're using. So accuracy is more important the more you play.

As for your second question, I haven't read this year's Guide so I don't know if the claimed earnings include slot club benefits. Let's assume that benefits were not included and this person won $80,000 playing quarter video poker in one year. I'll use 1% as the player's advantage. Eighty grand is 1% of $8,000,000. At $1.25 per hand, $8 mil is 6,400,000 hands. At 1000 hands per hour, that's 6400 hours. With 52 weeks in a year, that's about 123 hours per week. A week has only 168 hours in it. Playing 123 hours doesn't leave much time for anything else. So either this person included slot club benefits in his earnings, was very lucky, or ...

...played a multi-hand video poker machine. On a Triple Play machine, he would have to play 41 hours a week--just a bit more than if he worked a full-time job. A four-play machine requires only 30 hours per week to get in the action and a five-play only about 21. With the advent of multi-hand video poker machines with positive expectation paytables, it is possible to earn $80,000 a year playing quarter video poker.

Happy New Year and best of luck in and out of the casinos,
John

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@home.com.

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