3 card poker probability

This is a curiosity more than anything else. Playing in a 3 card Poker tournament on the final table there will be 6 players for 20 hands. My questions is what is the probability than one of my opponents will have Trips or a Straight Flush?

When I look at the Wizard's site there is a .004523 probability that a person will have trips/SF on a given hand. In the tournament, my opponents (5 of them) will have 100 total hands. So is a good way to look at this is to multiply the probability by 100 to get 45.23% or is there some other way you should look at this?

Larry

There are 100 combinations of 3 of a Kind and Straight Flush, out of 22100 possible hands. Discounting the fact (for simplicity's sake) that 3 of a Kind will remove 12 Straight Flushes from the other 4 hands on that deal, then I'd say that it is (100/22100)*100*5 other players, a 2.26% chance that you'll see either hand in the other 5 players' cards during the tournament.

Am I right? Someone else can probably take into account the effect of one hand eliminating others.

I can't tell you the answer.

But, in terms of tournament strategy, you need to assume that they will not get trips or a straight flush. If they do, there's no betting strategy you can employ that will be able to beat them.

I've never played a 3 card poker tournament, but like a BJ tournament, obviously the amount you bet in relation to what others bet is the key. Then also, staying in with nothing at the right time is important also.

I know this didn't answer your question, but good luck in the tournament!

Actually I was looking around and found this calculator for Probability of K out of N. http://vassarstats.net/textbook/ch5apx.html It gives me an answer of 28.87% for 1 and 36.45% for 1 or more.

I just found out you can do the same thing in Excel with the BINOMDIST function.

Larry