How many 5-card hands have at least two cards with the same rank?

Kendra Hudson

Kendra Hudson

Answered question

2022-09-04

How many 5-card hands have at least two cards with the same rank?
This is a question from Zybooks Exercise 5.7.2: Counting 5-card hands from a deck of standard playing cards. I just can't wrap my head around the answer. If there is anyone that can explain this in English, that would be greatly appreciated.
How many 5-card hands have at least two cards with the same rank? Apparently the answer to this is ( 52 5 ) ( 13 5 ) 4 5 .
I see that we are using the complement rule here. I get ( 52 5 ) denotes all the 5-card hands in a 52-card deck, but I don't see why we are subtracting ( 13 5 ) 4 5 .

Answer & Explanation

Jaden Mason

Jaden Mason

Beginner2022-09-05Added 15 answers

Step 1
There are 13 ranks and if all cards are of different ranks, there are ( 13 5 ) ways to choose 5 ranks and for each rank there is ( 4 1 ) ways to choose a card. So there are ( 13 5 ) 4 5   ways of choosing 5 cards, all of different ranks.
Step 2
Now as you said, ( 52 5 ) is the total number of hands with 5 cards. So subtracting ( 13 5 ) 4 5 from ( 52 5 ) gives number of hands of 5 cards where at least two cards are of the same rank.
Skye Hamilton

Skye Hamilton

Beginner2022-09-06Added 14 answers

Step 1
A five-card hand contains at least a pair unless it contains five cards of different ranks. There are 13 ranks in the deck. The number of ways of selecting five different ranks is ( 13 5 ) . For each rank, we must select one of the four suits, which can be done in ( 4 1 ) ways. Hence, there are
( 13 5 ) ( 4 1 ) 5
ways to select five cards from different ranks.
Step 2
Subtracting this quantity from the total number of ways of selecting five cards from the 52 cards in the deck yields the number of five-card hands which do not contain a pair.
( 52 5 ) ( 13 5 ) ( 4 1 ) 5

Do you have a similar question?

Recalculate according to your conditions!

New Questions in Discrete math

Ask your question.
Get an expert answer.

Let our experts help you. Answer in as fast as 15 minutes.

Didn't find what you were looking for?