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Penney's game

A possible sequence in Penney's game: heads, tails, heads
Graphs of best responses for Penney's games of sequence lengths 3 and 4 – each sequence is dominated by the sequence pointing to it with the given probability (italics) or odds (normal text)[1]

Penney's game, named after its inventor Walter Penney, is a binary (head/tail) sequence generating game between two players. Player A selects a sequence of heads and tails (of length 3 or larger), and shows this sequence to player B. Player B then selects another sequence of heads and tails of the same length. Subsequently, a fair coin is tossed until either player A's or player B's sequence appears as a consecutive subsequence of the coin toss outcomes. The player whose sequence appears first wins.

Provided sequences of at least length three are used, the second player (B) has an edge over the starting player (A). This is because the game is nontransitive such that for any given sequence of length three or longer one can find another sequence that has higher probability of occurring first.

  1. ^ "Best response strings for strings of length 3. | Download Scientific Diagram". Retrieved 29 March 2023.

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