Related papers: Penney's game between many players

We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the…

We revisit the game in which each of several players chooses a pattern and then a coin is flipped repeatedly until one of these patterns is generated. In particular, we demonstrate how to compute the probability of any one player winning…

Penney's game is a two player zero-sum game in which each player chooses a three-flip pattern of heads and tails and the winner is the player whose pattern occurs first in repeated tosses of a fair coin. Because the players choose…

We consider a game with two piles, in which two players take turn to add $a$ or $b$ chips ($a$, $b$ are not necessarily positive) randomly and independently to their respective piles. The player who collects $n$ chips first wins the game.…

We introduce and analyze several variations of Penney's game aimed to find a more equitable game.

Consider equipping an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ with a group action that partitions the set of words into equivalence classes which we call patterns. We answer standard questions for the Penney's game on patterns and show non-transitivity for…

In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…

This is an introduction into John Conway's beautiful Combinatorial Game Theory, providing precise statements and detailed proofs for the fundamental parts of his theory. (1) Combinatorial game theory, (2) the GROUP of games, (3) the FIELD…

Let $a$, $b$, and $n$ be integers with $0<a<b<n$. In a certain two-player probabilistic chip-collecting game, Alice tosses a coin to determine whether she collects $a$ chips or $b$ chips. If Alice collects $a$ chips, then Bob collects $b$…

We introduce a new family of Parrondo's games of alternating losing strategies in order to get a winning result. In our version of the games we consider an ensemble of players and use "social" rules in which the probabilities of the games…

The multiplication game is a two-person game in which each player chooses a positive integer without knowledge of the other player's number. The two numbers are then multiplied together and the first digit of the product determines the…

We illustrate how one can use basic combinatorial theory and computer programming technique (Python) to analyze the combinatorial game: Mahjong. The results confirm some folklore concerning the game, and expose some unexpected results.…

In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…

In this note, we give an alternate proof of the multinomial theorem using a probabilistic approach. Although the multinomial theorem is basically a combinatorial result, our proof may be simpler for a student familiar with only basic…

The theory of combinatorial game (like board games) and the theory of social games (where one looks for Nash equilibria) are normally considered as two separate theories. Here we shall see what comes out of combining the ideas. The central…

We propose a simple method for combining together voting rules that performs a run-off between the different winners of each voting rule. We prove that this combinator has several good properties. For instance, even if just one of the base…

Consider a 4-player version of Matching Pennies where a team of three players competes against the Devil. Each player simultaneously says "Heads" or "Tails". The team wins if all four choices match; otherwise the Devil wins. If all team…

An analytical result and an algorithm are derived for the probability distribution of the one-dimensional cooperative Parrondo's games. We show that winning and the occurrence of the paradox depends on the number of players. Analytical…

In the original Parrondo game, a single player combines two losing strategies to a winning strategy. In this paper we investigate the question what happens, if two or more players play Parrondo games in a coordinated way. We introduce a…

In this article, we consider some simple combinatorial game and a winning strategy in this game. This game is then used to prove several known results about non-repetitive sequences and approximations with denominators from a lacunary…