[pilowsky]

Suit combinations (from Wikipedia) and probabilities are hard to memorise. Simple rules such as 'odds break even and evens break odd' are helpful when there are only a few cards to worry about. While walking the poodles this morning I met a local maths teacher friend, and I mentioned that "when I was at school" we used logbooks. "Oh yes, we use them to record hours on the road when the kids are learning to drive," he said.

I wondered if Logs would be useful in remembering probabilities for suit combinations. A helpful rule of thumb for log scales is that to make something linear if it changes logarithmically, you plot the data on a 0,1,3,5,10 scale to achieve a straight line.

Below is what happens when I plot the individual probabilities for suit combinations on a log scale.

In practice, this reminds one that the likelihood of seeing the worst possible break is roughly ten times smaller than seeing an equal break. Except of course, when it's me - I always get the bad breaks - nothing to do with my card play.

As you can see, the probability of an 8/0 split with 8 cards out is about 10 times less than seeing the most usual splits 5/3 or 4/4.
The rows correspond to the splits for (from top to bottom) 8,7,6 and 5 cards out. 0,1,2,3,4 follow the same pattern.

If instead, you would like to see a video about suits (with music) click here - it has dancing and a happy ending too.