Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
Alan, I sincerely doubt the claim that 18 Yos (elevens) were rolled in a row in craps.

The odds of one Yo is 1/18 -- or 5.6%.

Now, let's throw out the first one, because a Yo will eventually be rolled. So the question is -- what are the odds of 17 more consecutive Yos being rolled right after that?

Well, that math problem is easy. You take 1/18 and make it to the power of 17. So it's (1/18)^17.

And the answer? 1 in 2185911559738696531968.

Approximately 1 in 2 sextillion.

How long are those odds?

Let's say a craps roll occurs every 10 seconds. It doesn't (because the game pauses far more often than that), but let's go with that number.

At that rate, you would see 17 Yos in a row once every 692 trillion years. And we're talking about 17 Yos in a row. Change it to 18, and that goes up to once every 12 quadrillion years.

Needless to say, Alan has never seen 18 Yos in a row, nor has anyone anytime anywhere.

Unless the dice were loaded.
This assumes the first roll is already a yo and you only need 17 more yo's. Either way, it's a crazy number. That doesn't really do it justice. You can say a billion or a googol, but we can't really wrap our brain around it.

Put simply, you're far and away much more likely to get dealt three royal flushes in a row than to see 18 yo's in a row (about 143,000 times as likely). Dealt RF, as in being dealt all 5 RF cards and auto-holding all 5.

If you're playing video poker on 10-play and are dealt 4 to the royal, you're 748,000 times more likely to draw the single royal card, on all 10 draws, than to see 18 yo's in a row. I've played a good amount of 10-play, and I've hit a royal on 2 of the draws three times I can remember. I've never hit 3+ in one go. I would assume the machine malfunctioned if I hit all 10 (not that I'd deny the money).