Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:04:48.032Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Optimal Strategy for the First Player in the Penney Ante Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

János A. Csirik
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge, England

Abstract

In the Penney Ante game two players choose one binary string of length k each in turn, and toss a coin repeatedly. If at some stage the last k outcomes match one of their strings, the player with that string wins. The case k ≤ 4 is somewhat exceptional and in any case easily done. For k ≥ 5, Guibas and Odlyzko proved that the second player's optimal strategy is to choose the first k − 1 digits of the first player's string prefixed by 0 or 1. They conjectured that these two choices are never equally good. We prove that this conjecture is correct. Then we prove that 01…100 (with k − 1 ones) is an optimal strategy for the first player, and find all the strategies that are equally good.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

[1]Coxeter, H. S. M. (1969) Introduction to Geometry, John Wiley & Sons 209.Google Scholar
[2]Guibas, L. J. and Odlyzko, A. M. (1981) String Overlaps, Pattern Matching, and Nontransitive Games. J. Comb. Theory, Series A 30 183208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3]Iverson, K. (1962) A Programing Language, Wiley 11.Google Scholar
[4]Penney, W. (1969) Problem 95. Penney-ante. J. Recreational Math. 2 241.Google Scholar