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Colour-pair card game with a 10 dollar prize

Question

A shuffled standard 5252-card deck is dealt two cards at a time. Two black cards go to the dealer, two red cards go to you, and a mixed pair is thrown away; this repeats 2626 times. You receive $10 only if your pile ends up strictly larger than the dealer's; ties and losses pay nothing. What is the game worth?

Short answer

$0. Each discarded pair removes one red and one black card, so equal numbers of red and black cards survive. Those survivors are exactly your pile and the dealer's pile, so the game always ties and never pays out.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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