Is a higher FPS cap better for competitive online casino tournaments?

But FPS limits and online gambling are not really on speaking terms – poker and roulette, after all, is not exactly “action”. It’s latency and server ping that count. More FPS will not make online gambling more responsive, or provide a competitive advantage to anyone.

In poker tournaments, you cannot cheat. Everyone gets to see all the cards and action simultaneously. There's simply no advantage to having 60 frames per second rather than 30. And in real-time roulette, the ball bounces around on the wheel and lands on a number based on physical laws or truly random number generation, regardless of the screen refresh rate.

Instead, I would worry about maintaining good server connectivity and network bandwidth for the players. In this kind of game, a rock-solid 30 FPS should be more than enough. Increasing the frame rate will not improve the gaming experience for anyone, and some folks may find it difficult to play at all on weaker machines.

Forget FPS. Online casinos don’t care about that. Just give them a smooth experience on any device.

Online casino FPS caps mostly apply to games that have real-time components, such as live roulette or video poker. If you play poker, which is turn-based, FPS caps will not matter. Increasing FPS can improve visual smoothness, but won’t provide a tangible advantage (unless it also leads to less input lag – which is uncommon in casino software). As a tournament director, I would rather concentrate on latency and server uptime than FPS. You want your tournaments to be fair, not beautiful.

The only benefit of high FPS is that it looks better in the graphics (or more fluid). It’s irrelevant in a game like poker where you rarely need to do anything other than click a button. Similarly, even though live roulette requires more physical engagement, it’s still a turn-based game; you can’t gain any advantage from having faster FPS. What really counts for playing well is being able to make good decisions fast. So the only thing relevant is a low ping and a stable internet connection. I would rather see them focus on that than pushing to some arbitrary FPS limit. Finally, not everyone has top-of-the-line gaming computers, so having a reasonable limit is just fair for keeping things looking consistent across all devices.

FPS limits have little impact on casino games such as poker and roulette. It isn’t a real-time strategy shooter that you need to react in milliseconds. Increasing the FPS limit may improve latency by a few milliseconds, an inconsequential difference. The biggest impact will be the network connectivity and the latency of the server. Ensure those elements are optimized to provide the most enjoyable experience for all competitors. Most people will not notice a dramatic difference with a higher FPS setting. Simply keep the game running smoothly.