Probability of getting 2 cards with the same color

card-gamesconditional probabilityprobability

You have two decks of cards: a 52 card deck (26 black, 26 red) and a 26 card deck (13 black, 13 red).

  1. You randomly draw two cards and win if both are the same color. Which deck would you prefer?
  2. What if the 26 card deck was randomly drawn from the 52 card deck? Which deck would you prefer then?

The first question is straightforward. By symmetry,
$$P(\text{same color}) = 2P(\text{two red}) = 2P(\text{second red}|\text{first red})P(\text{first red}).$$
In the 52 card deck, the probability is thus $2 \cdot\frac{25}{51}\frac 12 = \frac{25}{51}$
while in the 26 card deck, it is $2 \cdot \frac{12}{25}\frac 12 = \frac{12}{25}$, and since $\frac{25}{51}> \frac{12}{25}$ the first deck has higher winning odds.

For the second question, here's my approach. Let $R$ be a r.v. modelling the number of red cards in the smaller deck. $R$ follows a hypergeometric distribution:
$$P(R=r) = \frac{\binom{26}{r}\binom{26}{26-r}}{\binom{52}{26}},$$
thus
$$\begin{align}
P(\text{same color})
&= P(\text{two red})+P(\text{two black})
\\
&= \sum_{r=0}^{26} P(\text{second red}|\text{first red, }R=r)P(\text{first red}|R=r)P(R=r) + P(\text{second black}|\text{first black, }R=r)P(\text{first black}|R=r)P(R=r)
\\
&=\sum_{r=0}^{26} (\frac{r-1}{25} \frac{r}{26} + \frac{25-r}{25} \frac{r}{26})\frac{\binom{26-r}{r}) \binom{26}{26-r}}{\binom{52}{26}}
\\
&= \frac{2}{25\cdot 26} E[R(R-1)] = \frac{2}{25\cdot 26}(V[R]+E[R]^2-E[R]) = \frac{25}{51}
\end{align}
$$

This is the same probability as for the full deck ! I'm very surprised with this result, I'd like to see an intuitive explanation or a shorter proof that doesn't involve as many computations.

Best Answer

Posting my comment as an answer:

If you first pick $26$ cards out of $52$ and then pick two random cards out of those, it's the same as picking $26$ cards out of $52$ and then taking first two of them because all orderings of $26$ cards are equally likely. Which in turn gives the same result as picking $2$ cards out of $52$ and then not picking $24$ others.