What are the odds? Statistical miracles
Mine That Bird shocked the horse racing world last weekend when it won the Kentucky Derby as a 50-1 long shot. It was the second biggest upset in the 135-year history of the event.
Bowen Wallace of Tilden picked the horse to win it. He also picked Pioneerof the Nile (6-1) to finish second, Musket Man (19-1) to finish third and Papa Clem (12-1) to finish fourth on a single ticket. The $1 investment, known as a "superfecta" in horse racing, returned $278,503, setting a record payout at Retama Park.
It was nothing short of a statistical miracle that fittingly had odds of about 290,000-1.
Golfers can play with regularity and never hit a hole-in-one, a signature milestone in the sport. The great Ben Hogan is widely reported to have never carded an ace in his Hall of Fame career. He learned at a young age to avoid aiming for the pins, citing the hickory wood they were made out of was more likely to send the ball off the green than direct it into the cup.
Still, you'd think that at one point or another, the late Hogan would have made a "mistake" and hit one just to say he did it.
Poker has its own statistical miracles and career-defining moments in the form of its upper echelon hand rankings.
The best hand in poker is the Royal Flush, but few know the odds of ever hitting one are worse than the numbers stacked up against Wallace - 649,740-1.
A player has a Royal Flush when he holds A-K-Q-J-10 of the same suit or uses a shared board of cards to make the hand. There are only 13 cards of each suit in a deck, so it requires a special chain of events for everything to fall into place.
Poker players who play primarily in live settings really have the odds stacked against them. Most casino and home games will average around 25-30 hands per hour. It would take more than 21,000 hours of play to get to 650,000.
The straight flush is the second-best hand in poker with odds of 64,973-1, but like the Royal, players can go years or even a lifetime without holding one.
Players will see four of a kind once every 4,164 hands, but this powerhouse hand actually feels obtainable. It's common to see flops with a pocket pair in hopes of hitting a set (three-of-a-kind), which players will do about once every eight flops.
Once you hit a set, you aren't going anywhere for the rest of the hand, so it's a near guarantee to see the remaining two cards. Sometimes one of those cards fills up the quads.
There was a truly amazing hand played during the 2008 World Series of Poker that produced mathematical odds that can send a calculator in for repair. The hand was documented in front of the ESPN cameras and can be found online athttp://www.youtube.com/
watch?v
With the board reading Ah-9c-Qd-10d-Ad, Justin Phillips got his opponent to commit all of his chips while he was holding a Royal Flush with Kd-Jd. His opponent had four aces.
Got a poker question or comment? E-mail Chuck at cblount@express-news.net.
