Interesting concept posted below -- I took one of those Evelyn Wood speed-reading courses when I was around 30 years old and tripled my reading speed -- and while the course does allow comprehension as well (not important for a novel, but very important when studying for a test), I'm not sure it translates to VP all that well, since you must "read" the dealt hand with 100% accuracy in order to make a correct hold -- although, on the other hand, you don't need to be able to recall exactly what the hand was in terms of cards and suits, so maybe a "scan" of the dealt hand is what most of us are really doing.
I also was able to play blackjack very rapidly when I played -- since I felt that I had an edge against the house with card counting, I would seek out a dealer where I'd be heads up, and could play a single hand at a time (as opposed to playing two spots, which I'd also occasionally do, but I'm not counting that here) for 300 hands per hour (yes, 5 hands per minute!). I'm sure that there were players (and are still) who, with a fast dealer, could do even better.
The point being made that questions the importance of rapid play is valid -- it only makes sense to try to get in lots of hands per minute / hour when you have an edge against the house; otherwise, all you do is take your negative EV and magnify it to an hourly loss rate that increased by the percentage of speed increase you accomplish (and that assumes no increase in errors). However, it made great sense to get more hands in per unit of time when there were full pay games and 2/3% cash-back. Now (at least for myself) the few positive EV games I find are progressive royals -- and in those situations, not only does it make sense to get in lots of hands in order to increase the number of opportunities to get the royal, but if it's a progressive at a bank of machines (which is usually the case), you are, in a sense, "competing" with the other players to get the royal, and if you can play more hands per minute/hour than most of the other players, to
that extent you have an edge over them for getting the royal.
--BG
My untested belief based on a small sample (two) is that VP playing speed is directly related to reading speed. Probably 80% natural ability and 20% practice. My wife Chris reads extremely fast, she can easily finish a typical paperback novel in less than a day without effort. She plays video poker at about 1000-1200 hands per hour without any effort on games that she knows well and I clocked her several years ago (if I remember correctly) at 1600 on FPDW back when we were playing that a lot. She can play 1000 hph and carry on a conversation! I, on the other hand, make mistakes at any speed when I get chatty. Seriously, I struggle to get over 800 with accuracy when concentrating on the task. My ADD may have something to do with it ;-) Put a couple glasses of wine in me and I'm probably better off playing craps!
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