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Picking the safest full house before a random deal

Question

From a standard deck you may choose any five cards that form a full house (three of one rank plus two of another). Your opponent then gets five random cards from the remaining 4747, and standard poker rankings apply. Card values are 22–1010 at face value and J, Q, K, A =11,12,13,14=11,12,13,14; a full house's value is the sum of its five cards (e.g. 2229922299 is worth 2424). Consider the full houses, identified by their ranks only, that maximise your probability of winning. What is the sum of their values?

Short answer

228228. Three aces mean no opponent full house can win, leaving only quads (equally likely whatever pair you hold) and straight flushes. Holding aces already blocks the ace-low and ace-high straight flushes in three suits, so the pair should be a rank in the most remaining straight flushes, namely 6,7,86,7,8 or 99 (a brute-force count confirms these tie). The hands AAA66AAA66 through AAA99AAA99 are worth 54+56+58+60=22854+56+58+60=228.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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