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What are the mathematical odds of achieving a perfect game in hearts? (Shooting the moon four times in a row?)?
I accomplished this feat a few years while playing Microsoft hearts against the computer. Ever since my perfect game I've wondered what the mathematical odds were of winning in such a fashion. That is, assuming an average understanding of the game and a proficient technique at playing, what is the approximate likelihood of shooting the moon 4 consecutive times in the first four rounds of play for a score of 0 to 104 to 104 to 104???
If anyone knows a figure please share it. Or if there are any statistics experts out there I would love to hear your estimate of these odds.
Thanks!
2 Answers
- Kermit The RockLv 510 years agoFavorite Answer
Theoretically, its possible to list out every possible game, but practically they cannot. A few years back they had suercomputers calculate every possible chess game, but it was a huge computing task.
For some games its easy. tic-tac-to for example has 9!=9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2=362,880 possible games
Hearts would be more like chess than tic-tac-to.
Then, there is no way to calculate probabilities on how well decisions are made. I suppose one might find mathematical the best choices for every play.
One possibility is to take a large number of professionally played "real" games. Calculate the likelyhood of a expert player Shooting the Moon. (maybe 1 in 10, I don't know for sure). Then taking it to the 4th power (each game is independant of the others, so simply find the likleyhood p and raise it to the 4th p^4 for the probbaility of 4 in a row.). If it were 10%, four in a row would be a 1 in 1000 event.
- Anonymous5 years ago
Shooting yourself over that is definitly extreme. However, even though its just 5 games into the season there is cause for concern. Tampa is playing very well and is looking like they could be a competitor all season which means the AL East won't be the typical two horse race it usually is. Now I'm not saying the season is over, I just don't think that Yankee fans should expect the type of turn around they've come accustomed to.
