When playing a game of blackjack, what are the odds that you will be dealt BlackJack on the first deal? Assume you are playing with one opponent and your opponent is the dealer.

Note: 10, jack, queen and king all are worth 10. Aces are worth 11. You have blackjack when the values of both your cards add up to 21. There is only one deck of cards being dealt out.

(In reply to Change the official solution by Sanjay)

As a matter of fact, if we want to get all technical here, since the question asks for 'odds' and not 'probability' the corrcet answer should be:
Odds for being dealt a Blackack = 32 to 631
Odds against being dealt a BlackJack = 631 to 32.

Odds are slightly different from probability, in that if the probability of occurance of an outcome is, lets say, 1/5 (or 20%), this translates to odds of 1 to 4 for the outcome, and to odds of 4 to 1 against the outcome. In other words, in this example, it means that the outcome is 4 times more likely to 'not occur', than to 'occur'.

Posted by Sanjay on 2003-07-05 09:30:47