Fortune and Ruin

Abstract

The coin-tossing game, modest as it may look, is nevertheless rather instructive when we wish to consider what may be expected in general from games, and in particular the ups and downs of a player’s fortunes. But let us be quite clear, when we speak of games, we are referring to games that depend on chance alone. We exclude games in which a player can apply certain logical strategies to counter the previous moves of his or her opponent (as happens in many card games, checkers, chess, etc.). On the other hand, we nevertheless understand ‘games’ in a wide sense: results derived from the analysis of coin-tossing sequences are applicable to other random sequences occurring in daily life.