Conditional Probability in poker, Bayes Theorem

bayes-theoremconditional probabilitypoker

In a four person pokergame you are dealt a "king of heart" and "8 of spades". Three cards lay on the table none being a king or 8, meaning there is 41 cards left.

Q: What is the probability of the next community card is a king or 8th?

I hope this makes sense, English is not my first language.

Best Answer

Okay, as @JMoravitz commented, there is a much easier method.

However, since you desire to do so using Bayes' Rule:


The deck is partitioned into four parts: (A) the two places in your hand, (B) the three places face up, (C) the next place in the deck, and (D) the forty-six remaining places of the deck.

The cards are partitioned into three categories : (I) the king of hearts and eight of spades, (II) the six remainder of kings and eights, (III) the remaining forty-four cards.

The events are: $E$ the evidence, and $F$ the favored event.

The evidence is that the two places of $A$ contains both from the type-$\sf I$ cards, the three places of $B$ contains none from the type-$\sf II$ cards ... and therefore three from the type-$\sf III$ cards, with the remaining cards are split among the forty-seven places of $C$ and $D$ .   This is evaluated using multinomial coefficients as:

$$\begin{align}\mathsf P(E) ~&=~\left.\dbinom{2}{2,0,0}\dbinom{3}{0,0,3}\dbinom{1+46}{0,6,41}\middle/\dbinom{52}{2,6,44}\right. \end{align}$$

The favoured event is that place $C$ contains 1 from the type-$\sf II$ cards ... with the remaining cards split among the 51 places of A, B, and D.


Well, that should suffice to get you started on finding $\mathsf P(F\mid E)$ using Bayes' Rule.

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