Some Fun Poker Numbers
Often there is a lot of free time at a poker table. You can just concentrate on those two rocks checking down the pot so often before you fall asleep. Here are some interesting poker numbers to while away the time between hands.
In the community card game like Hold’em or Omaha, you are dealt two cards and three of the other fifty are flopped on the board. There are a total of 19,600 uniquely different flops that can hit the table. The same is true for every other player at the table but they are not exactly the same 19,600 flops because your two cards are included in their potential flops and their two cards are included in yours. Some would argue that with ten players in the hand, there are actually only 32 cards (52-10 two card hands) available for the actual flop. But since you cannot see any cards but your own, the math is based on the remaining 50 cards you cannot see.
The full board of five cards (3 flop, 1 turn, 1 river) have an astonishing 2,118,760 unique combinations for any two card starting hand. Figure the odds on that!
In a five card game your chances of having an Ace High hand are 190 time greater than your having a Seven High hand. If this one confuses you, you just gotta take out a deck of cards and deal some five card hands because if you are confused by this statistic, you do not have a complete understanding of how hands are ranked and how the cards fall. No really get that deck out!
Here is my favorite statistic to test new players. “What are the odds that you will be dealt AK and pair either the Ace or the King by the river card?”
The answer is exactly 50% or 2 to 1. With 50 cards out, you have 6 cards (3 aces and 3 kings) to make your big pair. A lot of folks do the 6/50 and get 12% but they forget that you are not seeing one card but five. So the math is 6/50 and if you miss, 6/49, 6/48 etc. You have a 50/50 chance of hitting the big pair. Now your odds of winning the hand; well that is another story all together.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #52
