Ultimate Poker Hand
by Kay Novy
Title
Ultimate Poker Hand
Artist
Kay Novy
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Yes, this was my Royal Flush, last month in Las Vegas. Need, I say it was a great trip!
....................................................................................................................
A royal flush is a flush, so all cards must be of the same suit. Unlike other flushes, the value of all five cards are determined. These cards must be the ten, jack, queen, king and ace. Since there are four suits of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, there are only four possible royal flushes that can be dealt.
...................................................................................................................
We now carry out the division and see that a royal flush is rare indeed. There is only a probability of 4/2,598,960 = 1/649,740 = 0.00015% of being dealt this hand. To put this number in perspective, if you were dealt 20 hands of poker every night of the year, in 89 years you should only expect to see one royal flush. So this hand is not as common as what the movies might make us believe.
.....................................................................................................................
Some of the techniques of combinatorics, or the study of counting, can be applied to calculate the total number of poker hands. It is important to note that the order in which the cards are dealt to us does not matter. This means that each hand is a combination of five cards from a total of 52. We use the formula for combinations and see that there are a total number of C( 52, 5 ) = 2,598,960 possible distinct hands.
Uploaded
December 5th, 2013
Statistics
Viewed 817 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/18/2024 at 7:49 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
