text: two cards drawn, without replacement from standard deck 52 cards, how many sets of two cards are possible?   you have 52 choices for the first card and 51 for the second card, so it's 52*51 choices = 2652 choices  however, the above answer counts the ace of spades, followed by the king of spades as one choice, and the king of spades followed by the ace of spades as a different choice.  ordinarily, we would call those two choices the same thing.  to correct for that, divide the above answer by 2 = 1326 choices.  but either answer is possible, depending on whether you wish to count a different order of the same cards as different or the same.  (for the record, the first answer is 52 p 2, and the second answer is 52 c 2)