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Symmetric walk hitting 10 before 0 from 6

Question

A token moves on the integers 0,1,…,100,1,\dots,10. At each step it goes up or down by one with equal probability, and it stops for good on reaching either 00 or 1010. Starting at 66, what is the probability it stops at 1010?

Short answer

35\tfrac35. The position of a symmetric walk is a martingale, so by optional stopping 6=10⋅p+0⋅(1−p)6=10\cdot p+0\cdot(1-p), giving p=0.6p=0.6. Equivalently, for gambler's ruin the hit probability is linear in the start point.

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