Probability Theory Poker

• Probability Theory Poker Game
• Probability Theory Probability
• Probability Theory Predicts That There Is

Intro

Overall, the probability that Vanessa’s card is the highest is the product of the probability that her card is higher than John’s and the probability that her card is higher than Thomas’ with regard to the fact that her card is higher than John’s. This yields (8/12)x(7/11) ≈ 0.42. This means that the probability of her having the. Poker Probability – Part 1: Basics of Probability. The market for uncertified physicians was not very big in 16th-century Italy. So when a young Girolamo Cardano found himself without a College membership or cash, he did what any reasonable person would do: he became a professional gambler.

This is a problem concerning basic probability calculations from the text: “A First Course in Probability Theory” by Sheldon Ross (8th addition).

Sample Problem

Chapter 2 #16. Poker dice is played by simultaneously rolling 5 dice. Show that:
a) P[no two alike] = .0926, b) P[one pair] = .4630, c) P[two pair] = .2315, d) P[three alike] = .1543, e) P[full house] = .0386, f) P[four alike] = .0193, g) P[5 alike]=.0008.

Solution

Notation, I will let ^ designate the power function. For example, 6^5 is 6 to the fifth power. 6! is 6 factorial, 6! = 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1.
To calculate the Probabilities here, we will divide the number of occurrences for a particular event by the total possibilities in rolling 5 dice.
N[total] = total possibilities in rolling five dice = 6^5 = 7776
Note: N[total] is the number of ordered rolls. For example, if we rolled the dice one by one and rolled in order 3,4,5,6,2, it would be considered as different from if we rolled 2,3,4,5,6 in order.
a) P[no two alike]
There are 6 choices of numbers for the first dice. The 2nd dice must be one of the remaining 5 unchosen numbers, and the 3rd dice one of the 4 remaining unchosen numbers, and so on… This gives an ordered count, so:
N[no two alike] = 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 = 720
P[no two alike] = N[no two alike]/N[total] = 720/7776 = 0.09259259
b) P[one pair]
First we count the possible sets (unordered) of numbers. Here we have one number that is the pair, 6 choices. Then we must choose 3 different numbers from the remaining 5 values, as these three are equivalent, we have choose(5,3) = 5!/(3! * 2!) possibilities. So 6 * choose(5,3) is the total combinations of numbers. Since we are dealing with ordered counts, we must consider the orderings for each set of numbers. We have 5 die with 2 the same so the number of orderings is 5!/2!. Multiplying these together gives us the number of ordered samples:
N[one pair] = 6 * (5!/(3! * 2!)) * (5!/2) = 3600
P[one pair] = N[one pair]/N[total] = 0.462963
c) P[two pair]
Here we have 2 pairs which are equivalent, so we must choose 2 values from the 6 possible values, choose(6,2)= 6!/(2! * 4!). Then we must choose 1 value from the remaining 4 for the single value, 4 ways. Now we must consider the orderings, 5 die with 2 sets of 2 the same so the number of orderings is 5!/(2! * 2!).
N[two pairs] = (6!/(2! * 4!)) * 4 * (5!/(2! * 2!)) = 1800
P[two pairs] = N[two pairs]/N[total] = 0.2314815
d) P[three alike] (the remaining two cards are different)
There are 6 choices for the three of a kind. Then we must choose 2 different values from the remaining 5 choices, choose(5,2) = 5!/(2! * 3!). The number of orderings is 5 items with 3 being identical, which is 5!/3!.
N[three alike] = 6 * (5!/(3! * 2!)) * (5!/3!) = 1200
P[three alike] = N[three alike]/N[total] = 0.154321
e) P[full house] 3 alike with a pair.
We need one value for the three that are alike, 6 ways, and then we must choose from the remaining 5 values for the pair, 5 ways. The orderings are given by 5!/(3! * 2!).
N[full house] = 6 * 5 * (5!/(3! * 2!)) = 300
P[full house] = N[full house]/N[total] = 0.03858025
f) P[four alike]
We need one value for the four of a kind, and then one value from the remaining 5 for the last die. The number of orderings is given by 5!/4!.
N[four alike] = 6 * 5 * (5!/4!) = 150
P[four alike] = N[four alike]/N[total] = 0.01929012
g) P[five alike]
Here we need 1 value for the five alike, 6 ways. There is just 1 possible ordering as all five die are the same.
N[five alike] = 6
P[five alike] = N[five alike]/N[total] = 0.0007716049
Check: the numbers of each type must sum to N[total] = 7776:
720 + 3600 + 1800 + 1200 + 300 + 150 + 6 = 7776

Extra:
Straight
We can have two possible straights: one composed of (6,5,4,3,2) and one composed of (5,4,3,2,1). Each of these straights can be permuted 5! ways.
N[straight] = 2 * 5! = 240
P[straight] = N[straight]/N[total] = 0.0308642

Now let’s run a simulation in R:

Results of simulation:
notwoalike: 0.09194
onepair: 0.464
twopair: 0.23187
threealike: 0.1554
fullhouse: 0.03727
fouralike: 0.01889
fivealike: 0.00063
straight: 0.03072

This post works with 5-card Poker hands drawn from a standard deck of 52 cards. The discussion is mostly mathematical, using the Poker hands to illustrate counting techniques and calculation of probabilities

Working with poker hands is an excellent way to illustrate the counting techniques covered previously in this blog – multiplication principle, permutation and combination (also covered here). There are 2,598,960 many possible 5-card Poker hands. Thus the probability of obtaining any one specific hand is 1 in 2,598,960 (roughly 1 in 2.6 million). The probability of obtaining a given type of hands (e.g. three of a kind) is the number of possible hands for that type over 2,598,960. Thus this is primarily a counting exercise.

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Preliminary Calculation

Usually the order in which the cards are dealt is not important (except in the case of stud poker). Thus the following three examples point to the same poker hand. The only difference is the order in which the cards are dealt.

These are the same hand. Order is not important.

The number of possible 5-card poker hands would then be the same as the number of 5-element subsets of 52 objects. The following is the total number of 5-card poker hands drawn from a standard deck of 52 cards.

The notation is called the binomial coefficient and is pronounced “n choose r”, which is identical to the number of -element subsets of a set with objects. Other notations for are , and . Many calculators have a function for . Of course the calculation can also be done by definition by first calculating factorials.

Thus the probability of obtaining a specific hand (say, 2, 6, 10, K, A, all diamond) would be 1 in 2,598,960. If 5 cards are randomly drawn, what is the probability of getting a 5-card hand consisting of all diamond cards? It is

This is definitely a very rare event (less than 0.05% chance of happening). The numerator 1,287 is the number of hands consisting of all diamond cards, which is obtained by the following calculation.

The reasoning for the above calculation is that to draw a 5-card hand consisting of all diamond, we are drawing 5 cards from the 13 diamond cards and drawing zero cards from the other 39 cards. Since (there is only one way to draw nothing), is the number of hands with all diamonds.

If 5 cards are randomly drawn, what is the probability of getting a 5-card hand consisting of cards in one suit? The probability of getting all 5 cards in another suit (say heart) would also be 1287/2598960. So we have the following derivation.

Thus getting a hand with all cards in one suit is 4 times more likely than getting one with all diamond, but is still a rare event (with about a 0.2% chance of happening). Some of the higher ranked poker hands are in one suit but with additional strict requirements. They will be further discussed below.

Another example. What is the probability of obtaining a hand that has 3 diamonds and 2 hearts? The answer is 22308/2598960 = 0.008583433. The number of “3 diamond, 2 heart” hands is calculated as follows:

One theme that emerges is that the multiplication principle is behind the numerator of a poker hand probability. For example, we can think of the process to get a 5-card hand with 3 diamonds and 2 hearts in three steps. The first is to draw 3 cards from the 13 diamond cards, the second is to draw 2 cards from the 13 heart cards, and the third is to draw zero from the remaining 26 cards. The third step can be omitted since the number of ways of choosing zero is 1. In any case, the number of possible ways to carry out that 2-step (or 3-step) process is to multiply all the possibilities together.

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The Poker Hands

Here’s a ranking chart of the Poker hands.

The chart lists the rankings with an example for each ranking. The examples are a good reminder of the definitions. The highest ranking of them all is the royal flush, which consists of 5 consecutive cards in one suit with the highest card being Ace. There is only one such hand in each suit. Thus the chance for getting a royal flush is 4 in 2,598,960.

Royal flush is a specific example of a straight flush, which consists of 5 consecutive cards in one suit. There are 10 such hands in one suit. So there are 40 hands for straight flush in total. A flush is a hand with 5 cards in the same suit but not in consecutive order (or not in sequence). Thus the requirement for flush is considerably more relaxed than a straight flush. A straight is like a straight flush in that the 5 cards are in sequence but the 5 cards in a straight are not of the same suit. For a more in depth discussion on Poker hands, see the Wikipedia entry on Poker hands.

The counting for some of these hands is done in the next section. The definition of the hands can be inferred from the above chart. For the sake of completeness, the following table lists out the definition.

Definitions of Poker Hands

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Counting Poker Hands

Straight Flush
Counting from A-K-Q-J-10, K-Q-J-10-9, Q-J-10-9-8, …, 6-5-4-3-2 to 5-4-3-2-A, there are 10 hands that are in sequence in a given suit. So there are 40 straight flush hands all together.

Four of a Kind
There is only one way to have a four of a kind for a given rank. The fifth card can be any one of the remaining 48 cards. Thus there are 48 possibilities of a four of a kind in one rank. Thus there are 13 x 48 = 624 many four of a kind in total.

Full House
Let’s fix two ranks, say 2 and 8. How many ways can we have three of 2 and two of 8? We are choosing 3 cards out of the four 2’s and choosing 2 cards out of the four 8’s. That would be = 4 x 6 = 24. But the two ranks can be other ranks too. How many ways can we pick two ranks out of 13? That would be 13 x 12 = 156. So the total number of possibilities for Full House is

Note that the multiplication principle is at work here. When we pick two ranks, the number of ways is 13 x 12 = 156. Why did we not use = 78?

Flush
There are = 1,287 possible hands with all cards in the same suit. Recall that there are only 10 straight flush on a given suit. Thus of all the 5-card hands with all cards in a given suit, there are 1,287-10 = 1,277 hands that are not straight flush. Thus the total number of flush hands is 4 x 1277 = 5,108.

Straight
There are 10 five-consecutive sequences in 13 cards (as shown in the explanation for straight flush in this section). In each such sequence, there are 4 choices for each card (one for each suit). Thus the number of 5-card hands with 5 cards in sequence is . Then we need to subtract the number of straight flushes (40) from this number. Thus the number of straight is 10240 – 10 = 10,200.

Three of a Kind
There are 13 ranks (from A, K, …, to 2). We choose one of them to have 3 cards in that rank and two other ranks to have one card in each of those ranks. The following derivation reflects all the choosing in this process.

Probability Theory Poker Game

Two Pair and One Pair
These two are left as exercises.

High Card
The count is the complement that makes up 2,598,960.

Probability Theory Probability

The following table gives the counts of all the poker hands. The probability is the fraction of the 2,598,960 hands that meet the requirement of the type of hands in question. Note that royal flush is not listed. This is because it is included in the count for straight flush. Royal flush is omitted so that he counts add up to 2,598,960.

Probabilities of Poker Hands

Probability Theory Predicts That There Is

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2017 – Dan Ma