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Each bridge hand receiving exactly one ace

Question

A shuffled 5252-card deck is dealt into four hands of 1313 cards each. What is the probability that every hand contains exactly one of the four aces?

Short answer

219720825≈0.105\tfrac{2197}{20825}\approx0.105. Place the aces one at a time into the 5252 positions: the second ace must avoid the first ace's hand (3951\tfrac{39}{51}), the third must avoid two hands (2650\tfrac{26}{50}) and the fourth three hands (1349\tfrac{13}{49}). The product is 39⋅26⋅1351⋅50⋅49\tfrac{39\cdot26\cdot13}{51\cdot50\cdot49}.

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Aces', p.81; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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