Gambler going broke at an exact round
Question
A player begins with dollars (an integer). Every round they gain one dollar with probability or lose one dollar with probability , and they stop as soon as their wealth reaches zero. Let be the probability that ruin happens at precisely round , for an integer . Evaluate , rounded to four decimal places.
Short answer
About 0.1084. Ruin at round needs wins and losses, with probability for the counts (); by the ballot theorem (read backwards from ruin) a fraction of those paths first hit zero at the last step. With : .
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Open the worked solutionLessons behind this question
- Conditional Probability, Total Probability, and Bayes' Rule
- Worked Examples — Probability Trees, Monty Hall, and Bayesian Updating
- Gambler's Ruin and First Passage Times
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