Video Poker Number of Concurrent Hands

I知 sure this must be on here somewhere but I have been unable to locate it so I知 just going to ask: When playing video poker, is there an advantage to playing single hand vs. multiple hands or is it just a function of time and bankroll? If multiple, is there an optimal number and does the ideal strategy differ mathematically?

If you play a dollar denomination machine and play 100 hands at a time and get dealt a Royal, you'll win $400,000. I'd say it's all about bankroll.

Time and bankroll. To paraphrase @ChumpChange, you can be dealt identical garbage hands, but you can also be dealt identical Royal Flushes. The only real difference between playing, say, Triple Play VP and three separate machines that just happen to deal the same hands is, you can't hold different sets of cards in Triple Play - but why would you want to?

If you are putting the same coin in (ie 5 play $1 vs 1 play 5$) playing more hands reduces variance. If you are playing a game with positive expectancy, this decreases the amount of bankroll needed to prevent risk of ruin. There is no 'optimal' number. There is no change of strategy, unless you were misplaying single play.

I can think of edge case scenarios where one might make the less swingy play in order to decrease variance. Perfect play will be the same though. There are some games where it is correct to split up a FH to go for 4 of a kind, which obviously increases your variance. There are also edge cases where you make a play that is theoretically correct, but hitting the big hand would trigger a W2G, and a potential tip where the 'correct' play might be different.