Pricing a card game won only if reds survive
Question
Starting from a standard -card deck, Jane and you alternately draw two cards (Jane first). Two blacks go to Jane, two reds go to you, and a mixed pair is thrown away. After the deck runs out, your piles are merged, shuffled and the process repeats until one colour has disappeared. You receive $100 if any red cards are left at the end. What should you pay to play?
Short answer
$0. Cards are only ever removed as a red and a black together, so the numbers of red and black cards remaining stay equal ( each initially). One colour can vanish only when both do, so no red cards ever remain and the payoff is zero.
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Sample Spaces, Events, and the Probability Axioms
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
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