Unbelievable odds. Trillion to one?

Spaded · #1 06-19-2005, 09:34 PM

Same guy flops quad 8s on consecutive hands.

First hand:
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (6 max, 4 handed) converter

Hero ($31.1)
BB ($34.7)
UTG ($116)
Button (The guy)($117.55)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. Hero posts a blind of $0.25.
1 fold, Button calls $0.50, Hero (poster) completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($1.50) 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (3 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, Button checks.

Turn: ($1.50) 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (3 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $4, Button calls $4, Hero folds.

River: ($9.50) 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (2 players)
BB checks, Button bets $3, BB folds.

Final Pot: $12.50

His hand: A8

Second hand:
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (6 max, 5 handed) converter

Hero ($30.6)
SB ($30.2)
BB ($116)
UTG ($50)
MP (The same guy)($122.1)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 5[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. SB posts a blind of $0.25.
UTG raises to $3, MP calls $3, 2 folds, BB calls $2.50.

Flop: ($9.25) K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] (3 players)
BB checks, UTG bets $4, MP calls $4, BB folds.

Turn: ($17.25) 7[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] (2 players)
UTG bets $5, MP calls $5.

River: ($27.25) J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (2 players)
UTG bets $6, MP raises to $15, UTG calls $9.

Final Pot: $57.25

His hand: 88

I'm not mad (i didnt lose anything) but everyone started blaming party poker [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Now what are the odds that one person flopsquad 8s on consecutive hands?

nathan_hicks · #2 06-19-2005, 10:14 PM

Hmmm, the odds don't seem to be favorable for that happening. This sort of reminds me of the time I saw a guy hit a Royal Flush in the final table of a big MTT. Five hands later he hit another Royal Flush. Both times he was all in preflop.

I have never hit a Royal and have played hundreds of thousands of hands.

AaronBrown · #3 06-19-2005, 10:34 PM

Not a trillion, not even two billion to 1. There are 48 ways to flop quad 8's (the fifth card can be any of 48), out of the 2,118,760 five-card hands. So doing it once is 1 in 44,141. Doing it twice in a row is 1 in that number squared, 1,948,413,167. Flopping any two quads twice in a row is 1 in 11,529,072.

iceman5 · #4 06-19-2005, 11:29 PM

The odds of winning the lottery are that high or higher but nobody thinks its fixed when someone wins

Spaded · #5 06-19-2005, 11:42 PM

Just a few orders of magnitude off then [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

AaronBrown · #6 06-20-2005, 01:14 PM

Not quite. The chance of SOMEBODY winning the lottery is 100% (or less in those games with rollovers, but it's still a big number). Interestingly, there seem to be more multiple lottery winners than would be expected by random chance, and that does cause some people to think they're fixed (although it seems to me if you fixed it, the first thing you would do is make sure never to use the same collector twice).

It's also true that the odds of SOMEBODY getting dealt quad 8's twice is a row is virtually 100%, given about 10 billion poker hands dealt each year.

But we do know people make mistakes. The odds of PokerStars having a screwed up program that sometimes does things like this might be 1,000 to 1. So if you've seen, say, 10,000 PokerStars hands, and one of them was a 2 billion to 1 shot, it's not irrational to suspect a problem.

Like the multiple lottery winners, a fix is not a good hypothesis. If I'm fixing, I'm making your A's and Q's lose to my three 8's; I'm not dealing myself quad 8's twice in a row to win small pots. And I'm creating lots of virtual players to collect my money for me, not one obvious big winner.

Jim C · #7 06-20-2005, 02:13 PM

Sorry to correct, but its only 1 in 44,141 (if your numbers is correct) as the first event is a given event.

Thus its the probability of event occuring, given a particular event has already occured.

Dov · #8 06-20-2005, 03:20 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry to correct, but its only 1 in 44,141 (if your numbers is correct) as the first event is a given event.

Thus its the probability of event occuring, given a particular event has already occured.

[/ QUOTE ]

The second event cannot happen without the first.

The question was about consecutive hands.

Correction noted.

Dov · #9 06-20-2005, 03:22 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry to correct, but its only 1 in 44,141 (if your numbers is correct) as the first event is a given event.

Thus its the probability of event occuring, given a particular event has already occured.

[/ QUOTE ]

The question is about consecutive events.

The second cannot happen without the first.