Prince of Wales, Highgate
Jun. 3rd, 2009 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajvaThe above pub is well known for doing one of the toughest pub quizzes in the country, to the extent that they've even published their own quiz book. So having been there a couple of times before a couple of years ago, my pub quiz team of me, Stef and our pal Nick went there again tonight for a challenge (I'm just back now; it's a bit of a long journey back home), managing a creditable sixth out of fifteen.
They have a 'beer round', which is not part of the main quiz but comes in the middle. We were one of only three teams to get all six questions right, but unfortunately we didn't ace the tie-break, which was:
"How many different five-card hands are there in a game of poker played with a 52-card deck?"
My heart sank. Because I'm the maths specialist on the team and I knew exactly what I had to do, but couldn't remember exactly what the 'X choose Y' formula was. 'Something factorial over something else factorial' was as far as I could remember after several pints*. So I took a (not bad) guess, thinking close might be good enough.
It says something about the quality of the competition, I think, that both other teams got it exactly right (2,598,960).
Never mind: we'll be back. :o)
* Tbh, though, I'm not sure I would have been able to work out 52!/5!47! or even the (n-(k-1)) etc. version with pen and paper in time from scratch anyway. I suspect the other teams may have known it as a fact. I shall certainly be burning the number into my memory for future reference...
They have a 'beer round', which is not part of the main quiz but comes in the middle. We were one of only three teams to get all six questions right, but unfortunately we didn't ace the tie-break, which was:
"How many different five-card hands are there in a game of poker played with a 52-card deck?"
My heart sank. Because I'm the maths specialist on the team and I knew exactly what I had to do, but couldn't remember exactly what the 'X choose Y' formula was. 'Something factorial over something else factorial' was as far as I could remember after several pints*. So I took a (not bad) guess, thinking close might be good enough.
It says something about the quality of the competition, I think, that both other teams got it exactly right (2,598,960).
Never mind: we'll be back. :o)
* Tbh, though, I'm not sure I would have been able to work out 52!/5!47! or even the (n-(k-1)) etc. version with pen and paper in time from scratch anyway. I suspect the other teams may have known it as a fact. I shall certainly be burning the number into my memory for future reference...
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 01:37 pm (UTC)That's the number of five card hands, but in Poker, AH AD KH KD QH is exactly the same as AS AC KS KS QS or any other 'two pairs, aces and kings, plus a queen' hand.
So the number of different poker hands is rather less. And left as an exercise for the reader :)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 02:32 pm (UTC)