Odds Question - AA & KK in Consecutive Hands

Hey all. This is my first post here, but I am a student of Harrington on Hold 'Em and soon to be moving on to Sklansky once I finish off Harrington Volume II.

I thought I'd break the ice with an odds question that was a little intriguing to me.

I was playing in a 10+1 sit n go last night on Pokerroom. We were down to 4-handed and I was the short stack with some work to do. All of the sudden, next thing I know all 3 of my opponents were all-in and the chip lead wins the hand with AA, catapulting me into 2nd. So the first hand heads-up I get J 10 suited, and decide to go with it, and I'm called by the chip leader who rolls KK and finishes off the table.

As it were, this guy took out the first 3 at the table, the last 3, and I think at least 1 or 2 in the middle. He was unconscious.

Does anyone know what the odds are of him getting AA and KK in consecutive hands?? Its gotta be insane.

Hope I can work my way into some conversation here at the forum. It looks like there's a lot of great discussion to be had!

Welcome to the forum!

For questions like this, you may get better answers in the Probability forum.
Second of all, I don't think the odds of this really matters, since the cards are reshuffled every hand and you can't use this mathematical value to predict what your opponents cards will be. My best response would be: Don't worry about it.

Damn. I missed that forum. Are there mods around that can move threads, or am I stuck?

I'm not really "worried" about it. With cards like he was hitting, the dude deserved to win, and I was happy to squeak into 2nd thanks to 2 others not so smart play.

I realize that the odds of hitting any given hand, be it A A or 7 2, are x number of possible hold 'em hands (probably should know that number) to 1, but I'm not sure how you compute odds of 2 consecutive hands...or if the strength of the hands can even be factored in at all.

Is it a question without a real answer? Anyway, just thought it might be an interesting question to pose and break the ice.

Thanks for the welcome!

It seems as if you are using some flawed logic--if I read your post correctly. Are you going all-in with the assumption that the odds of a person getting AA and then KK or QQ on two consecutive hands is extremely low? Basicaly that is a flawed assumption. Your play should be based on your starting hand quality, the size of the blinds, position, and the relative size of the stacks vs making the $$, not to mention tightness of the players. If you try and decide that there's no way in hell this guy just got dealt premium cards 2 hands in a row or 3 hands in a row because its theoretically impossible--well not only is it not impossible, but its likely! In the scheme of things, someone could easily be dealt AK one hand, then QQ, then KK without anyone at the table skipping a beat. Yeah, you might say, wow, this guys on a roll or whatever, but you cant start saying, "Oh he just got dealt a good hand therefore now the odds say he must be dealt a weak hand."

-g

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Like I said, I'm from the "School of Harrington". I made the play based on my situation, with very little consideration of what the other player was holding. With $1600 to his $13,400, I needed to double up...and fast.

I think this is getting blown out of proportion, and I think that maybe in the interest of trying to spark some interesting discussion, maybe all I did was ask an unanswerable question. Or at least a question without any sort of merit, given the fact that the odds of any two consecutive hands are the same as any other two consecutive hands, and there's no way to incorporate hand strength into the equation.

Perhaps I should just crawl back into the woodwork and keep my unanswerable questions to myself. /images/graemlins/blush.gif /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Well i misread your post.
I think you should keep asking questions and posting thoughts. Maybe this question needs clarification or maybe there isnt much more to be said. But even if you get flamed or whatever, it doesnt matter. its just an anonymous forum.

g

The probability of hitting AA and then KK in two consecutive hands is 1/48841
The probability of hitting KK (or any other particular pair) immediately after AA is 1/221.

[ QUOTE ]
The probability of hitting AA and then KK in two consecutive hands is 1/48841
The probability of hitting KK (or any other particular pair) immediately after AA is 1/221.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well would you look at that.

221 squared = 48841. That makes sense. That's the math I was missing.

Thanks a lot!

I was just kidding about crawling back in my hole. I'd definitely like to get into discussions around here like I originally said. Thanks to all!