A hand is chosen, a hand is a collection of 9 cards, which can be sorted however the player chooses. Fair enough. How many 9 card hands are possible? So let's think about it. There are 36 unique cards, and I won't worry about there's 9 numbers in each suit, and there are 4 suits, 4 times 9 is 36. But let's just think of the cards as being 1 through 36, and we're going to pick 9 of them. So at first we'll say, well look, I have 9 slots in my hand, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.