First to reach <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si2.svg" display="inline" id="d1e54"> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:math> game

We consider a game with two players, consisting of a number of rounds, where the first player to win rounds becomes the overall winner. Who wins each individual round is governed by a certain urn having two types of balls (type 1 and type 2). At each round, we randomly pick a ball from the urn, and its type determines which of the two players wins. We study the game under three regimes. In the first and third regimes, a ball is taken without replacement, whilst in the second regime, it is returned to the urn with one more ball of the same colour. We study the properties of the random variables equal to the properly defined overall net profits of the players, and the results are drastically different in all three regimes.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Statistics & Probability Letters
Published
2026-03-05
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spl.2026.110713
Primary Topic
Artificial Intelligence in Games
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

First to reach <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si2.svg" display="inline" id="d1e54"> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:math> game

Magnus Wiktorsson, Stanislav Volkov
Statistics & Probability Letters
Artificial Intelligence in Games
article

First to reach <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si2.svg" display="inline" id="d1e54"> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:math> game

Magnus Wiktorsson, Stanislav Volkov
article en

Abstract

We consider a game with two players, consisting of a number of rounds, where the first player to win rounds becomes the overall winner. Who wins each individual round is governed by a certain urn having two types of balls (type 1 and type 2). At each round, we randomly pick a ball from the urn, and its type determines which of the two players wins. We study the game under three regimes. In the first and third regimes, a ball is taken without replacement, whilst in the second regime, it is returned to the urn with one more ball of the same colour. We study the properties of the random variables equal to the properly defined overall net profits of the players, and the results are drastically different in all three regimes.

Statistics & Probability LettersVol. 235
Openalex Percentile: Top 37%
Artificial Intelligence in Games
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