What are the Odds?
Today’s blog post is a little different!
I enjoy playing poker, a game that requires a fair amount of skill, psychology and yes, luck. But poker is also all about mathematical probabilities. There are many books and now websites dealing with the odds of making up all the various poker hands. Here are just a few from the website Probability in Poker.com.
- Odds of getting a Royal Flush are 1 in 649,740. This improves to 1 in 64,974 if you drop the royal part and just aim for a Straight Flush. Already have 4 of the 5 cards you need for a straight flush? Your chances of getting the 5th card are 2 in 47.
- The odds of being dealt 4 of a kind are 1 in 4165. But suppose you already have 3 of a kind. Should you aim for 4 of a kind or even a full house? Absolutely, say the math folks, because the chance of getting your 4th card is pretty good, relatively speaking, at 1 in 10, or even moving up to a full house with a 1 in 16 chance.
- How about some of the more common hands, like 3 of a kind? Odds are 1 in 47 you’ll be dealt 3 of a kind, but if you already hold a pair, you have a 1 in 8 chance of getting that 3rd card. Chances of being dealt two pair: 1 in 21. Single pair: 1 in 2.3, meaning that in every 3 hands dealt to you, you should receive a pair. But here’s where poker can feel a little cruel: the odds of getting a particular hand never change based on what happened in a previous hand so just because the last three hands you’ve been dealt haven’t contained a pair, this doesn’t mean a pair in the next hand is a sure thing!
Maybe you’re not a poker player and the last paragraph has you nodding off – sorry about that! Maybe some of these other statistics will interest you. (This information comes mainly from TheLongestListoftheLongestStuffattheLongestDomainNameatLongLast.com).
- Are you dreaming of becoming a billionaire? If you live in the US, your chances of that happening are about 1 in 1,000,000, and world-wide, about 1 in 7,000,000.
- Maybe finding a four-leaf clover will improve your odds of becoming wealthier. Odds of finding that four-leaf clover on your first try are about 1 in 10,000.
OK, maybe rolling dice will give you better luck. If you roll two 6-sided dice, what is the combination most likely to come up? There’s a reason they call it “Lucky 7” since seven is more likely to come up than any other number. You are least likely to roll a 2 or a 12. In fact, you are six times more likely to roll a 7 than a 2 or 12. (Dice Probabilities)- Maybe golf will give you more success. Shooting for a hole-in-one? Odds of making it are about 10,000 to 1, if you’re an average golfer.
- It seems we hear fairly often about people out on a golf course getting struck by lightning. How common is that? Well, odds of that happening to you in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. Odds get longer, making the event less likely, if we eliminate the stupid factor. You and I would never put up our umbrellas or hunker under the tallest tree on the golf course in a lightning storm…. If you do get hit by lightning, chances are good you’ll survive with odds of dying 1 in 2,500,000, or, put another way, life goes on after 4 out of 5 lightning hits.
- Speaking of living… What are your chances these days of living to age 100? People today have a 2% chance of that happening, or odds of 1 in 50. The person most likely to live to age 100 is a white woman in a developed country who was the first-born child of a mother age 25 or younger. Be glad you’re alive in the 21st century because no matter how long you live, it’s probably going to be longer than at any point in the past. If you were around in the Stone Age, you’d be a senior at just age 20!
- Odds of having twins are about 3 in 100, triplets 1 in 8,000 and quadruplets 1 in 700,000.
- This past week news reporters were warning people that a bus-sized chunk of a decommissioned, 20-year-old NASA satellite was about to fall to earth. You stand a 1 in 3,200 chance of being hit by that piece of space junk.
- Odds of dying by natural disaster, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, are less than you might think at 1 in 3,357.
- Odds of dying, period, are one in one since no one gets out of here alive, but pick your method: 1 in 5 chance of dying of heart disease, 1 in 7 for cancer, 1 in 100 for vehicle accident, 1 in 20,000 for air travel. Yikes, this is just morbid; see The Odds of Dying.
- And how about winning the lottery? You often hear that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than win at 6-49. Sad but true. Odds of winning at 6-49 are 1 in 13,983,816, making it about 28 times more likely that you’ll be hit by lightning than by Lady Luck.
One last little b
it of trivia. You may have run into someone in your life with the same birthday as you. Ever wonder how many people need to be in a room together before you find two people with the same birthday? The answer might surprise you: you have a 50/50 chance in a room of just 23 people of finding two people with the same birthday. In a group of 75 people, there’s a 99.9% chance of that happening.
Check out these websites for more odds:
Probabilities in the game of Monopoly
Roulette Odds – Casino Odds and Roulette Probabilities
Poker Probabilities:
Texas Holdem Odds – Probabilities for Poker Hands
Blackjack:
Lotteries:
Lotteries: What are the Odds? CBC News
Lottery Probability, Lotto Odds
What are the odds I can help you find the perfect home or sell your treasured property? Let’s talk! Call me at 780-910-9669, email me at barry@barryt.ca, or contact me here.
Tags: odds, poker, probabilities
