{"id":181,"date":"2007-09-06T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=173"},"modified":"2007-09-06T06:00:30","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T10:00:30","slug":"math-poker-and-peter-winkler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/09\/06\/math-poker-and-peter-winkler\/","title":{"rendered":"Math, Poker, and Peter Winkler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.akpeters.com\/covers\/m\/9781568813363.jpg\" align=\"left\" height=\"188\" hspace=\"5\" width=\"125\" \/>Peter Winkler was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.akpeters.com\/product.asp?ProdCode=3363\">Mathematical Mind-Benders<\/a>.  <\/em>It is full of wonderful puzzles, at a level similar to the level aimed at by Martin Gardner (I have <a href=\"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=137\">written about Peter&#8217;s work before<\/a>):  go and buy it!  Here is a question (for which I will provide the answer in a day or so):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In poker, what is the best full house?<\/p>\n<p><em>Comment:<\/em> You may assume you are playing straight five-card stud poker (everyone gets five cards, all closed, no exchange] with (say) five companions,  using a single normal deck.  As a result of God owing you a favor, you are entitled to a full house, and you get to choose the full house you will get.  Which should you choose?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This one I got (I get about 1 in 10 of the puzzles, mainly because either I have seen them or I know the relevant professional literature).  I wonder how many professional poker players get it?  Answer in a day or two.  Comments with guesses welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter Winkler was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book Mathematical Mind-Benders. It is full of wonderful puzzles, at a level similar to the level aimed at by Martin Gardner (I have written about Peter&#8217;s work before): go and buy it! Here is a question (for which I will provide the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/09\/06\/math-poker-and-peter-winkler\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Math, Poker, and Peter Winkler&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}