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Three-card straight from an eight-deck shoe

Question

Eight standard 52-card decks are shuffled together into one shoe of 416416 cards, and three cards are dealt at random. What is the probability that they form a three-card straight (three consecutive ranks, with the ace allowed low as in A-2-3 or high as in Q-K-A) but not a straight flush?

Short answer

76824817≈0.031\tfrac{768}{24817}\approx0.031. There are 1212 rank runs, each rank appearing 3232 times in the shoe, giving 12⋅32312\cdot32^3 straights. Subtract the 12⋅4⋅8312\cdot4\cdot8^3 single-suit ones to get 368,640368{,}640, then divide by (4163)=11,912,080\binom{416}{3}=11{,}912{,}080.

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

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