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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

For more details and a schedule of Bob's free classes, visit www.bobdancer.com.

Feb. 10, 2009

A Class on Quick Quads

For the first time ever, on Tuesday February 24 I'm teaching a class on Double Double Bonus Quick Quads at the South Point Casino in Las Vegas, beginning at 1:00 in the afternoon. The reason I'm promoting this class two weeks before the class date is that you need to have some basic familiarity with Double Double Bonus Poker going in, and that class will be taught one week earlier at the same time and place. So if you're not familiar with Double Double Bonus strategy and you're interested in the Quick Quad clas, you'll be wise to make the February 17 class as well.

I'm actually excited about teaching this class. I've been playing, writing about, and teaching video poker for almost 15 years now, but this game brings a new level of excitement that I haven't experienced before. In the past three months I've personally played the game more than 100 hours --- sometimes at casinos where a slightly higher-paying but less interesting game was available. I like this game.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it comes in Triple Play/Five Play/Ten Play versions (not all versions at all casinos) where you pay six coins per line to play. This extra coin buys you excitement. You end up with a whole lot of extra quads (4-of-a-kinds) because the game uses an add-'em-up feature. That is, if your final hand is 99954, you get paid for four 9s because 5+4=9.

You get approximately twice as many quads in this game as you do in regular video poker, and quads pay a lot! Getting extra jackpots returning 250, 400, 800, or more coins (as well as some strange jackpot sizes such as 236, 275. Or 1,000 coins) is fun. These extra hands come with sound effects as the machine shouts out "Quick Quads!" whenever you connect (and collect) on one of them.

For me, one of the interesting features is you're looking a lot more closely at the ranks of the throwaway cards than you usually do. Normally if you're dealt 8862K in a video poker hand, you simply hold 88, but here you hold 8862. You still play 8863K in the normal way, of course, but you need to slow down a bit to differentiate between these two hands.

A lot of folks shy away from any sort of math problems. I understand that, but the math here is very simple. All you need to know is which two cards can add up to at most ten. That is, if you know that 1+9 and 2+8 and 3+7 and 4+6 and 5+5 add up to ten, that's all you must know about the tens. And tens are as tough as it gets! There are fewer combinations adding up to 8 or 9, fewer still adding up to 6 or 7, fewer still adding up to 4 or 5, and only one combination adding up to 2 (1+1) or 3 (1+2). If this math is still too tough for you, then you're not cut out for this game, but few people at that arithmetically challenged.

South Point has this pay schedule (returning 99.65% before you include the slot club and promotions) for stakes ranging from 25� Triple Play ($4.50 total bet) to $1 Ten Play ($60 total bet.) Many players can find a comfortable level to play at here.

On a related bit of good news for players, Action Gaming has paid a fee to me and co-author Glen Richards for the rights to "A Quick Guide to Quick Quads." This short book (slightly smaller than a Dancer/Daily Winner's Guide) will be posted on videopoker.com/quickquads and may be downloaded (and printed and/or shared with anyone else) for FREE! If you wish a hardcopy of the book rather than having to print it yourself, that'll be available from the same site for a nominal fee.

This book will include strategies for all six Quick Quad variations, for all pay schedules currently available anywhere. It will provide simple-yet-comprehensive explanations of the features that make this game unique.

As I write this, the book is in final production and will be available soon. Keep checking with videopoker.com/quickquads and you'll be able to get one of the first copies when it is actually available.