Wendy Testaburger and Sally Turner play a game with two unfair coins. A coin flip with Wendy's coin shows head with probability 1100. A coin flip with Sally's coin shows head with probability p. Wendy does the first coin flip. Wendy and Sally flip their coins alternately until a coin shows heads. The girl with the coin showing head wins the game. What value of p makes this game a fair game?
Answer
Wendy wins on the first flip with probability 1/100. Otherwise, the game keeps going and Sally has probability p to win on the next flip, which has overall probability 99/100×p. If not, the game returns to the start, which has no effect on fairness. So, to be fair, these two probabilities should be equal, which happens for p=1/99.
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