Video Poker Multi-play Royal Odds

I don't have much interest in multi play, still just getting my feet wet with VP, but I was wondering if the odds are still around 1 in 40,000 hands on a multi-play machine.

Assume simple 9/6 JoB, 100 hand machine...I'd think the odds would be a bit higher, being that each of the 99 hands subsequent are altered based on what you held.

Has anyone online crunched the numbers to this?

 

The odds are unchanged. You play the exact same strategy and hold the exact same cards in your first hand as on a single line machine. Each one of the 100 hands will use its own discrete, random draw to determine your replacement cards. The 2nd hand's redraw is not affected by what showed up as the redraw for the 1st hand, and so on.

The odds that you make a royal on any given single hand are unchanged.

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

The average probability for a royal is unchanged (1 in 40,390 for 9/6 JoB). Royal events (and other VP hands) will be clustered differently though. If you get dealt a royal on a 100 play you got 100 at once obviously. If you get dealt four to a royal on 100 play, you'll get slightly above two on average. Holding 3, less than 10% chance to convert any of them.

But this is all perfectly balanced by the times you just hold two, one, or no cards when your royal odds for that deal are pretty dismal.

 

Sometimes its so tempting to vary from optimal strategy when playing multi hand especially 100. I admit sometimes if i'm faced with 3 to a royal and a low pair I will hold the 3 to a royal and go against optimal play because i know I have so many chances at the royal..if single play its a no brainer but with 100 chances......

 

CORRECTED BELOW

 

How does variance change with multi play?

 

...the correct play on almost all games is to hold 3 Royal over a low pair regardless of the number of hands.

 

I was reading this all wrong. Odds are same for multi hand machines.

I was thinking about the Multi-Strike. Multiple hands but different strategy as you are just as concerned about moving up a level.

Image for MultiStrike

 

Depends on how much you are wagering between single line and multiline and how many lines you choose. For example, if you're playing 9/6 JoB at 1 line at the $5 level vs. 5 lines at the $1 level (i.e. same total wager), then the five line variance is only 28% of the single line game, or a more practical measure, the "standard deviation" (square root of variance) is 53% of the single line game. A rule of thumb is that your results will fall within 2 standard deviations of expectation about 95% of the time.

Now if you do the opposite and either play single line 9/6 JoB dollars or 5 line dollars (i.e. keeping the same bet per line), then your variance is 700% of the single line game, or the standard deviation is 264% of the single line game.

The wizard of odds discusses multiline variance and standard deviation here. Unfortunately it's one of his more technical articles.

https://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/appendix/3/

Yeah, multistrike is a complete different kettle of fish. I wouldn't recommend casual players play it either because of the level dependent strategies.