Odds of getting the same exact hand 5 times in a row.

[AaronBrown]

That's one time in 3,091,534,492,176. If everyone in the world dealt five hands every day for a year from perfectly shuffled decks, the odds are against any one every dealing five identical hands.

I agree that the odds of getting any hand five times is a row is probably more relevant than asking about a specific hand. But if it was pocket Aces five times in a row, he wouldn't be alive to post, that's survivorship bias.

[RiverTheNuts]

I got jacks 4 hands in a row on party a few months back, thats my biggest "same hand streak"

[AaronBrown]

That's much more likely. There are six ways to get Jacks, so 6^4 = 1,296 more ways to get Jacks for times in a row than a specific hand like Js Jd. You only have to play 2,385,443,281 hands to expect to get Jacks four times in a row. If everyone in the world dealt four hands, about three of them would get Jacks every time.

[Joshssj4]

For the people who do not believe me because of the sheer numbers keep in mind I am not a person to come onto 2+2 and make things up to create sheer conversation. It did in fact happen.

[2+2 wannabe]

[ QUOTE ]
That's much more likely. There are six ways to get Jacks, so 6^4 = 1,296 more ways to get Jacks for times in a row than a specific hand like Js Jd. You only have to play 2,385,443,281 hands to expect to get Jacks four times in a row. If everyone in the world dealt four hands, about three of them would get Jacks every time.

[/ QUOTE ]

plus the poster probably would have made his post with any pair, so you could probably multiply it by 13

[Onaflag]

I was bored and goofing around in one of the FPP tournies today and a guy piped in that he got the same hand 3 times in a row. Don't know if it's true. He didn't show them.

Onaflag..........

[AaronBrown]

With something this unlikely, it's fair to rule out that it happened by random chance. If it happened, it must have been a bug in PokerStars software. In a home game, these things happen because people don't shuffle well.

But with all due respect, this is a hand you would fold immediately and not focus on the details. Suppose you got one offsuit 6 3, then another. By the time you got the third you really noticed it and focused on the suits. When the fourth and fifth came in with identical suits; you remembered it as five exactly identical in a row? That's still unlikely, but it's 144 times more likely than five exactly identical in a row.

Or do you play more than one game at a time? Could you have looked at the hand, thought you folded it and went on to another game? When you came back to the first game and saw the same cards, you would have thought you got the same hand again. Four times in a row is 1,326 times more likely than five.

I'm not saying these things happened, just that it's easy to misremember a detail or two that is insignificant at the time, but dramatically changes the odds after the fact.

[Paul2432]

Everyone in this thread has the wrong answer.

The event happened in the past. The question was not "what is the probability I get 6h 3c five times in a row again?"*

The probability that this event happened is a function of two probabilities. If M=the probability that the OP making up this story for fun, and B=the probability the OP is a bad observer and believes he had the hand five times in a row but really did not, then the probability he actually received 6h 3c fives times in a row is (1-B)(1-M). I'll leave it to others to assign values to B and M.

Paul

*The question of the event repeating has not really been answered either. It is anywhere from 0-100% depending on how much the OP plays. If he never plays poker again, then it is 0%, if he plays an infinite number of hands, then it is 100%. The only question that has been answered is the probability that the next five hands (or some other earmarked set of 5 hands) will be 6h 3c.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]

Everyone in this thread has the wrong answer.

The event happened in the past. The question was not "what is the probability I get 6h 3c five times in a row again?"*

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it was more than obvious that that was what he meant. (here's a quick puzzler: what do you think the likelihood is that he meant "what are the odds against getting 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]3[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 5x in a row?" versus the likelihood that he meant "hey guys, evaluate the probability that I'm full of sh*t!")

You remind me of a friend of mine who used to try to pay for sodas in college with only a penny because the sign said "Coke, .99 cents"

[AaronBrown]

[ QUOTE ]
You remind me of a friend of mine who used to try to pay for sodas in college with only a penny because the sign said "Coke, .99 cents"

[/ QUOTE ]
I do that. I also argue when it says "Buy one, get one free," because if I have to pay for the first one, neither of the items are free. When it says "we will beat any price in town," I say "I offer a penny, beat that."

Yeah, we're annoying, but the world needs more of us.