For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the new IGT/Action Gaming game called Quick Quads. If you missed those columns, they’re available a few clicks away. Knowing the rudiments of the game will be necessary to understand today’s puzzler.

Assume you’re playing Triple Double Bonus in the Quick Quads version. In this game, you hold kickers with trips, so with 3334K the correct hold is 3334.

Now assume you’re dealt 44423. You know it’s correct to hold 4442 or 4443, but which one? Does it matter?

Actually it matters a lot --- for two entirely separate reasons. Neither reason will be obvious to beginning players, but intermediate or higher players should be able to discover both of them. I recommend you think about it until you come up with both of them. After you’ve come up with two reasons, then you can read on to see if your answer is the same as mine.

The first answer relates to the number of cards available to make a quad, and to make things a little clearer let’s assign suits to our cards. From 4h 4s 4d 2s 3c, if we hold 4442, there are four cards that will make the quad, namely 4c, 2c, 2d, and 2h. From 4443, there are five cards that will complete the quad, namely 4c, Ac, Ad, Ah, and As. This additional card giving us a quad makes 4443 a better choice than 4442.

But there’s more. The second reason relates to the number of cards available to create a full house. Let’s first look at the cards that give us a full house from 4443. We have 3d, 3h, and 3s. Three cards isn’t a lot, but it’s something. But from 4442, there are NO cards that give us a full house. If we draw another deuce (the 2d as an example), we are paid for a quad, not a full house.

So from 4443, we have five cards that give us a quad and three more that give us a full house. From 4442, we have only four cards that give us a quad and none at all that give us a full house. So 4443 is clearly the correct play.

I tend to deal with the minutia of video poker --- that is, I point out differences that are worth fractions of a penny. Let’s see how big of a deal this is for the 6-coin dollar player. The Quick Quads are worth $400 in this game, and we’ll assume full houses are worth $45. (They could be worth less than this, but hopefully my students wouldn’t play such a game.) Trips in this game are worth $15. Since we’re starting with holding 4443 or 4442 (and connecting on the other 4 pays the same $2,000 with both holds), these are the only pay schedule categories that we need to be concerned with.

Since we’re drawing one card, there are 47 possible draws. The extra quad is worth $385 (i.e. $400 minus the default $15 which we get if we don’t connect on anything else.) The extra full houses are worth $30 apiece (i.e. $45 minus the default $15). So ($385 + $30 + $30 + $30) / 47 = $10.11. That is, holding 4443 is worth $10.11 more than 4442 per line that we play. If we’re playing Five Play (for an initial bet of $30), the difference in the plays is more than $50. This is hardly “too little to worry about.”

This is the only game that I’ve discovered with “redundant full houses,” where the same five cards make up a quad and also a full house. Since you only get paid for the higher-paying hand, you miss out on the full house. It’s also the only game I know of where you can use five cards to create a quad. This feature is mandatory in order for you to have redundant full houses, so since this is the only game with this feature, it’s no wonder that it’s the only game with redundant full houses.

But because it’s the only game with this feature, players are not looking for it. Because of that, I suspect the “more quads from 4443” reason was discovered before “more full houses from 4443” by a high percentage of readers.

Sharp readers may have noticed that I did not give a value for “four fours with a kicker.” The play in question only happens on such games and the 800 this is awarded in Double Double Bonus is not the same as the 2,000 this is awarded in Triple Double Bonus. Wouldn’t this possibly affect the play?

The answer is no. From either 4442 and 4443, there is only one card that allows us to collect this bonus. One card apiece means that whatever the value of four fours with a kicker is, it affects both plays equally and thereby provides us with no reason to choose one over the other.

Bob Dancer is America's best-known video poker writer and teacher. He has a variety of "how to play better video poker" products, including the software "Video Poker for Winners," Winner's Guides, strategy cards, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his two novels, including Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer's products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com or by telephone at 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.