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Expected draws until the first ace

Question

Cards are turned over one at a time from a well-shuffled standard 52-card deck. On average, how many cards have been turned over at the moment the first ace appears (counting that ace)?

Short answer

10.610.6. The four aces split the 48 other cards into 5 gaps, and by symmetry each gap holds 48/548/5 cards on average. The first ace comes right after the first gap, so the expected count is 485+1=10.6\tfrac{48}{5}+1=10.6.

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