This guy enters a card competition where you have to play 1 hand against each player.The only problem is he has to leave early so he doesn't play every player because he has to leave early the total number of hands that were played at the competition was 59. After how many hands did the guy have to leave?

I don't believe that there's enough information to determined that.

Have you copied down the question correctly ?

It would help if you would write out the riddle exactly as its was stated to you. The problem here is that you don't tell us whether all the other people in the competition played out all their hands, except for the ones that your guy missed.

But here's a hint: if there are N people in a room shaking hands, and each shakes hands exactly once with every other person, the total number for hand shakes is: