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Setting a coin bias to make a first-head race fair

Question

Two players take turns tossing their own coins; whoever gets the first head wins. The friend's coin lands heads with probability 0.40.4, and to compensate the friend tosses first. Steven, who tosses second, can choose any heads probability pp for his own coin. What pp makes the game fair, i.e. gives each player a winning chance of 12\tfrac12?

Short answer

p=2/3p=2/3. Each full round both tosses are tails with probability 0.6(1−p)0.6(1-p), so the friend wins with probability 0.41−0.6(1−p)\tfrac{0.4}{1-0.6(1-p)}. Setting this to 12\tfrac12 gives 0.8=0.4+0.6p0.8=0.4+0.6p, so p=23p=\tfrac23.

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

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