I'm curious on how you derived the 1 in 2.6 billion?

>> ^CamW:
I'm curious on how you derived the 1 in 2.6 billion?


Here's how you can calculate the odds of getting dealt a particular hand in poker.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Poker.html

In a standard poker game (5-card draw), the odds of getting dealt a royal flush (before discards, no wild cards) is about 1 in 650,000.

However, the odds of what happened here (a royal flush AND four aces in the same deal) are probably a lot lower. Unfortunately, without seeing the match from the beginning (to see who discarded or drew cards/how many cards got discarded or drawn) I don't think it's possible to calculate the actual odds of this happening.

The original poster probably tried to multiply the odds of getting a royal flush by the odds of getting 4-of-a-kind. That will give you roughly 1 in 2.7 billion. However, that doesn't work for this game since this isn't a standard 5 card draw game of poker and also because the odds of getting 4 aces are significantly lower than those of getting just any 4-of-a-kind.

EDIT: I just googled the match and realized that a lot of sports writers were tossing around the 2.6 billion number in their articles about this game and justifying it by doing the math I wrote about above (odds of a royal flush multiplied by odds of getting 4-of-a-kind). Clearly that math is wrong for a variety of reasons but I wouldn't be surprised if the odds of this happening were ludicrously low.

2nd EDIT: I just realized that Wolfram's statistics are also wrong. They assume that you are getting five cards at a time (in other words, you're pulling 5 consecutive cards from the top of the deck). But in a real poker game there are at least two players, which means the odds of you getting a royal flush are actually much lower. In fact, the more players in the game, the less possible it becomes to get a royal flush (because of the increasing likelihood of one of the opposing players getting dealt the card you need to complete the flush).

3rd EDIT: I just actually did the math and figured out that the number of players actually has no effect on the odds of getting a certain hand straight off the deal--it kind of blew my mind a little.

Odds for getting a royal flush pulling first 5 consecutive cards off top of the deck:

(20/52) * (4/51) * (3/50) * (2/49) * (1/48) = (1.539 * 10^-6) = 1/649740

Your odds of getting a ten, jack, queen, king, or ace (of any suit) right off the start aren't bad at all. Notice on the second draw the odds drop dramatically, though, because now you have to match the suit of whatever you drew first.

Odds of getting a royal flush with with two players:

(20/52) * (47/51) * (4/50) * (46/49) * (3/48) * (45/47) * (2/46) * (44/45) * (1/44) = (1.539 * 10^-6) = 1/649740

At first I thought having an additional player would lessen the odds. After all, after getting your first card, your opponent now gets a card and there's a chance he'll get the card you need to complete the royal flush. That's what you see in the equation above--the (47/51), (46/49), etc. represent the odds that the dealer does not draw the card you need to complete the flush, allowing you to continue. Notice that what happens mathematically is that the 47s, 46s, 45s, and 44s (it's hard to see, but the 44s have strikethrough also) in the numerators and denominators all cancel each other out and you wind up with the same equation for as if you were just drawing off the top of the deck.

The same thing happens with three players (checked it) and I'm assuming four or five or six players as well. You always wind up with the same odds regardless of the number of players. Isn't math neat?

Yes, I have no life.

Trying to calculate the odds of those two hands being dealt is really irrelevant, and it misses the significance of the video. At the time the video starts most of the X to 1 possibilities are canceled out, because neither player would be continuing unless they had good cards.

The significance of the hand is how extremely lucky both players were.

When the last card was turned over (an Ace of Diamonds) it was the best possible card for both of them. For Mabuchi it gave him the extremely rare hand of four aces, there was only one possible hand that could have beaten him, unfortunately the AD also gave Phillips that hand. A Royal flush is the rarest hand in the game.

As Mabuchi sat there after the river was turned over he wouldn't have been thinking there is only one hand that can beat me and that would make this a 1 in X billion event therefore the odds of me losing are 1 in X billion. If Phillips hadn't looked at his cards the odds would be 1 in 2162, but as I said most of those possibilities are cards that Phillips would have already folded.

And I thought I had bad beats. Holy shit.

This video shows that poker is 100% skill, no luck involved.

How does that guy get away with being dressed like he's just got out of bed and wearing a huge set of headphones?

i have one friend who, whenever we play poker together, ALWAYS folds pocket queens. every single time he has stayed in with pocket queens, he's gotten a bad beat.

>> ^Dignant_Pink:
i have one friend who, whenever we play poker together, ALWAYS folds pocket queens. every single time he has stayed in with pocket queens, he's gotten a bad beat.



I always seem to do well with Queen/Duece offsuit, but I invariably lose with pocket aces. This is probably why I don't ever gamble with real money.

^>> ^BillOreilly:
>> ^Dignant_Pink:
i have one friend who, whenever we play poker together, ALWAYS folds pocket queens. every single time he has stayed in with pocket queens, he's gotten a bad beat.


I always seem to do well with Queen/Duece offsuit, but I invariably lose with pocket aces. This is probably why I don't ever gamble with real money.


If you're playing online poker for play money, this is why you lose a lot with pocket aces. People that play with play money online have nothing to lose, and therefore will play any two cards at any given time. Even if it's all-in pre-flop. You will find that if you play for real money, (higher stakes, not low stakes, as most folks seem to think that even in low stakes poker, real money doesn't mean much.) the donk factor drops considerably.

Whats the sign the guy holds up as soon as he put all his chips in?

Bad beat or bad bet?

Man that guy looks like Ray Romano. Is that guy at the very end Ray from "everyone loves raymond" ? Or am I nuts.

>> ^DrPawn:
Man that guy looks like Ray Romano. Is that guy at the very end Ray from "everyone loves raymond" ? Or am I nuts.


That IS Ray Romano. I used this shorter vid because the rest wasn't too interesting.

>> ^SDGundamX:

Your odds appear to be correct for stud, but this is Texas Hold 'Em. Players can make the best 5 card hand out of their 2 hole cards and 5 community cards (7 cards total). I think that changes the odds.

Also, I'm not sure if everyone is aware but this was at the World Series of Poker Main Event. It's 6,844 people who paid a $10,000 buy-in with top prize of over $9 million. That makes this beat even worse.

BTW, my worst bad beat. All in with AA against two guys both with KK. 9 10 J Q came on the community cards to give them both a straight and they chopped the pot.

It can't be all about luck. I have a friend who I would stake in any game. He beats everyone all the time. He won $2700 a couple weekends ago, sitting down at an 8-man Casino game in Niagara Falls at 5:30AM.

I too have learned to fold pocket queens and only noobs think that rockets are a sure thing.

Best advice to try and master:

It doesn't matter what hole cards you have, what matters is what the other guy THINKS you have.

It's easy to miss something in probability, but I think the odds for royal flush vs. pocket aces completing into quad aces in Texas Hold'em is:

4(flush suit)
* 3 (suit of second ace in shared cards)
* 44 (remainder card)
* 10 (5C2 - distributions of flush and remainder cards over pool/pocket)
/ 2781381002400 (possible cards for both players and in pool - 52P9 / 2! / 2! / 5!)

This is 1.89834e-9, which is about 1 in 526,776,705.