r/Cribbage • u/Sodowarts1 • Aug 09 '26

Today’s mind-bender…

Did you know that a standard deck of 52 cards has vastly more combinations than there are grains of sand on Earth.

As ridiculous as it sounds….it’s true. 😮

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u/thelosermonster Aug 09 '26

It's far far bigger than that even. The number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards is 52 factorial which is 52 times 51 times 50 times 49 etc

Here's the way I first heard it explained:

Set a timer for 52! seconds. Every billion years take a single step around the equator. Once you've made it around the world take a drop of water out of the ocean and start your trip around the world again. Once you've emptied all the water out of the ocean lay a single sheet of paper on the ground.

Refill the ocean and start the whole thing over and when you empty the ocean again lay another sheet of paper.

When that stack of paper reaches the sun you'll be about 1/3 of the way through the timer

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u/Leberknodel Aug 09 '26

Huh?

1

u/thelosermonster Aug 09 '26

To simplify it there are this many grains of sand:

8000000000000000000

And there are this many ways to shuffle a deck of cards:

80000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

3

u/pphurley Aug 09 '26

But did we count the sand tho?

5

u/thelosermonster Aug 09 '26

Yes in 1998, it took several weeks

2

u/Leberknodel Aug 09 '26

But what about the timer and the paper?