Playing Cards in Vegas

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Many of you may wonder why I visit Las Vegas so often. In prior years, it was a family reunion of sorts. We would meet my Mom, my brother and wife, and some Aunts and Uncles from SoCal. Later, it would be for golf, or shopping excursions. But now, it is mostly to visit dear friends, Ken and Debbie. Why? Mostly we play cards, in various forms, depending on the number of players. Ken and I play a double solitaire game with two decks, called Spite and Malice. We often play for hours at a time! In years past, it was also about golf,as Debbie is the ladies champion golfer at the TPC Summerlin. And, we always have a great time, due to their hospitality and many interesting friends, and relatives who gather there. What is it about cards that is so interesting, and perhaps confounding at the same time? Let's find out. There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than there are total atoms on earth! Assuming the deck is shuffled properly, there is a high likelihood that the combination has never before existed. A deck of 52 cards has a large number of permutations, in fact, it is a 59 digit number. Our game, using two decks, plus jokers, uses 108 cards. No two games are the same! And once in a while, we have to agree on some "mutually beneficial" rule changes to allow the game to progress! Here is a brief primer on a single deck of cards: Suppose you have 1 card: A. There's only one way you can put it in order.If you have two cards A and B, you can arrange them in two different ways. They can be AB or BA.With three cards A,B and C there are six different ways: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA

The way the numbers arrive is that for one card it's 1. For two cards it's 2x1=2 and for three cards it's 3x2x1=6. The quick way to write 3x2x1 is 3! The ! sign is called a factorial. Some calculators (including the one found on computers) have a special ! button.
Let's move on a bit.
<ul style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; color:7 font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.06px;">If you've got four cards you can arrange them in 4! = 24 ways.If you've got five cards you can arrange them in 5! = 120 ways.If you've got six cards you can arrange them in 6! ways = 720 ways.

Get ready for the BIG numbers!The number of ways you can arrange 10 cards is 3,628,800The number of ways you can arrange 13 cards is 6,227,020,800The number of ways you can arrange 20 cards is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000. That's two and a half billion billion.

So how many ways can you order all the 52 cards in a pack?

The sum is 52x51x50x49x48....x4x3x2x1 and the answer is:

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636, 856,403,766,975,289,505,440, 883,277,824,000,000,000,000

That's roughly the same as an 8 with 67 zeros after it.

To put this in perspective, the dinosaurs died out 65,000,000 years ago, and the age of the earth is just 4,500,000,000 years. Now suppose everybody in the world was to arrange packs of cards at the rate of one per second, it would take 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to get all the combinations! That's why you're VERY unlikely ever to shuffle a pack of cards the same way twice.



In other words, simply put, no two games are the same, ever! I am sure the same applies to your friendly card games with friends and family. And certainly to the famous poker games on TV.



So, yes, I will be in Vegas for a few days, and no, I will not be down on the Strip. Vegas Airport to TPC Summerlin, and back. It may sound boring to you, but I promise the card games are electric. I always look forward to the visit.

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