The Amazing Significo: why researchers need to understand poker
©www.savagechickens.com Suppose I tell you that I know of a magician, The Amazing Significo, with extraordinary powers. He can undertake to deal you a five-card poker hand which has three cards with the same number. You open a fresh pack of cards, shuffle the pack and watch him carefully. The Amazing Significo deals you five cards and you find that you do indeed have three of a kind. According to Wikipedia , the chance of this happening by chance when dealing from an unbiased deck of cards is around 2 per cent - so you are likely to be impressed. You may go public to endorse The Amazing Significo's claim to have supernatural abilities. But then I tell you that The Amazing Significo has actually dealt five cards to 49 other people that morning, and you are the first one to get three of a kind. Your excitement immediately evaporates: in the context of all the hands he dealt, your result is unsurprising. Let's take it a step further and suppose that The Amazing Significo was less ...