Odds vs Probability of it happening (8 Royal Flushes vs Lottery Win)

[CrestOfaWave]

A random thought entered my head recently when waiting for 1 of my many flight connections around Europe. The odds of hitting a Royal Flush are over 1.5m to 1 approximately. Since playing poker in November 2005 I have hit 2 Royal Flushes. The odds of winning a major prize in the lottery are approximately 13m to 1 (UK standard lottery). Therefore on that count I have to hit around 6-7 more Royal Flushes before I get to the kind of odds comparable to a major lottery win.

I have been doing approx £5 a draw for the past 8 years and have still not won more than £100.00.However using my approximations I should (based on probability) hit a big win within 12 years. So it will cost me approx £520 x 20 (years) = £10,400 to get a possible bumper return. (Or an opportunity cost of -£10,400 savings over the 20 year period).

My guess is that I will probably hit 6-7 more Royal Flushes before hitting any Major Lottery Win.

Have any blondietes out there hit more than 8 Royal Flushes and had a major lottery win??

ps Ironside - I posted this in General but feel free to reassign to a different category

Greg

[Graham C]

Have any blondietes out there hit more than 8 Royal Flushes and had a major lottery win??

LOL Doubt it very much

I thought the odds of a Royal Flush were about 650,000 to 1.

Had 3 anyway, no decent lottery wins yet.

[Ironside]

one thing your forgetting

how many hands of poker do you play a year compared to how many attepmts at the lottery do you have

if you play same amount of hands as you have attempts at lottery then you a lucky person

but i would imagine that you will find that if you played the lottery ever week for the 50000 years you would still be lucky to win it

[CrestOfaWave]

Have any blondietes out there hit more than 8 Royal Flushes and had a major lottery win??

LOL Doubt it very much

I thought the odds of a Royal Flush were about 650,000 to 1.

Had 3 anyway, no decent lottery wins yet.

649,739 to 1 (Googled it)

Bugger - that means I need about 18 more of them.

Point of the post was to show whether it was worth chancing £10,400 over a 20 year term on the off chance of hitting a major scoop. Over that period of time the money invested is relatively unnoticed and as I have no expensive habits like drugs,smoking etc.

[Graham C]

Why not chance the amount over less year?  If it's the amount that's key, buy £1000 every week of lottery tickets and with in 10 weeks, you could be a millionaire

Why wait 20 years?

[CrestOfaWave]

one thing your forgetting

how many hands of poker do you play a year compared to how many attepmts at the lottery do you have

if you play same amount of hands as you have attempts at lottery then you a lucky person

but i would imagine that you will find that if you played the lottery ever week for the 50000 years you would still be lucky to win it

I did a bit more digging and worked out that 2 tabling on average 2 hours a day for a year would allow you to play 87600 hands. My guess is I have played approximately 100,000 hands since Nov 2005.

Therefore ... (what follows is extract from site on odds)...

There are 2,598,960 various poker hands in a pack of fifty-two-card deck. If one player is dealt 100,000 hands in one lifetime, he will never hold more than 4% of all the possible hands.

Below is an estimation table of the number of pat (on the first five cards) poker hands that a single player can get in a lifetime.

Hands  Approx. In One Lifetime  
Royal Flush  0.15  
Straight Flush  1.4  
4 of a Kind  25  
Full House  170  
Flush  200  
Straight  400  
3 of a Kind  2,000  
Two Pair  5,000  
One Pair  40,00  
No Pair  50,000


So on this count I have already lucked my way above the Royal Flush quota and have definitely had more than 2 straight flushes (probably 10-15) - So I believe starting hand selection and continuation play on the flop has a big part to play on what major cards you hit in games of poker. So the skill element weighs more heavily than the luck element in lotteries.

[Tractor]

Either way you got to be a luckbox, which im not.
I havnt had a Royal Flush and I havnt won the lottery, in fact i do not do the lottery.

[Syme]

I have been doing approx £5 a draw for the past 8 years and have still not won more than £100.00.However using my approximations I should (based on probability) hit a big win within 12 years.

You can't just go around randomly adding or mulitplying probabilities to each other. That's not how it works.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to deduce from "The probability that I hit a royal flush is 1/1,500,000" that "The probability that I hit 10 royal flushes is 1/15,000,000" -- this is completely flawed for many reasons.

Suppose you are an internet pro (which you probably aren't) and four-table for 40 hours/week... that's about 8000 hands/week.  If the probability of hitting a royal flush is 1/650,000, then you will hit one every 81 weeks.

Suppose you buy 1,000 lottery tickets per week.  If the probability of winning the jackpot is 1/15,000,000, you will win once every 288 years.

Your return on £1 spent on the lottery is about 2p-3p.

I wouldn't be so rude as to hazard a guess of your return on £1 from playing poker.

[M3boy]

Another interesting odds fact for you.

Did you know, you have more chance of guessing a complete strangers telephone number than winning the lottery!!

Still wanna spend that £1 ?

[KingPoker]

Another interesting odds fact for you.

Did you know, you have more chance of guessing a complete strangers telephone number than winning the lottery!!

Still wanna spend that £1 ?

Give me 5 lucky dips!

[Tractor]

Once the jackpot becomes 14 million plus, then does it become +ev to play?
Probably not, because of the split pot possibilty?

[kinboshi]

When playing internet poker, the chance of hitting 10 Royal Flushes in a day is approximately 3/1.

Obviously, the odds are far greater in a live game when it's not rigged.

[mjrevie]

Suppose you are an internet pro (which you probably aren't) and four-table for 40 hours/week... that's about 8000 hands/week.  If the probability of hitting a royal flush is 1/650,000, then you will hit one every 81 weeks.

This is assuming that he see's every hand to the end - an assumption that is clearly not true.

Also, is this 650,000 value conditioned on the fact that he has certain cards, i.e. suited or connectable above T?

[ysoglum?]

One small point is that you cannot predict hitting a royal flush (unless he gives you grief in Brighton) or winning the lottery.
As each hand starts (or lottery draw) the odds reset from the previous hand/draw.
So you cannot say that if i play the requisite amount of hands the odds reduce until it happens, they never change.

It's like tossing a coin because you hit heads 500 times in a row there is no reason to think that tails are bound to come up next spin, the odds remain 50/50.

BTW i have had 1 royal flush (using both cards) in 4 years.

[Syme]

Right, of course the odds 'reset' with every deal... it is perfectly possible that I could get a royal flush today and tomorrow despite 81 weeks not passing.

But in the same way that my mathematical expectation is one head for every two flips of a coin, on average you will hit a royal flush every 81 weeks (assuming you play 8000 hands/week and never fold).

I don't know what the chances of hitting a royal flush are in 'real life' (ie considering the play of the game, I might fold a hand that would have become a royal flush if only I'd stayed in, etc), but it would be normal to hit a royal flush every few years or so -- but you cannot expect to ever win the lottery jackpot (unless you spend £1000s/week and live till you're 350).  It is silly to contemplate that the likelihood of these two events happening are comparable.

The concept of being 'due' a big win after playing the lottery for 20 years is risible.  If you spend £10,000 on lottery tickets, your total winnings will be in the £100s.  Keep at it though... at least you are funding opera houses etc for the other half.