Talk:Penney's game

Just to be clear, where it says "subsequence" it really means that and not "substring", right? I am putting in clarification based on that assumption. --Gallusgallus (talk) 10:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC) It would be nice to have an explanation of how, say

HHT looses to THH by 3:1, THH looses to TTH by 2:1, TTH looses to HTT by 3:1 but HTT looses to HHT by 2:1 (initial sequence)

i.e. the looser adopts the winners sequence each time but always looses.

The paper, scissors, stone example in the nontransitive link is fine as an example of a non transitive relationship but it doesn't fully explain what is happening here. For instance, an obvious question is to ask would be, what is/are the most likely sequence/s to occur first? If you pick one of them, how can another one be more likely? I'm not arguing against the article, I'm just pointing out that a bit of explanation would be nice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.98.117 (talk) 11:57, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I believe there is a mistake in the card variant of the game. For instance, it says that BBB is likely to win against BBR. I think it should be RBB instead of BBB, similar to how it is set up in the coin version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.23.137.247 (talk) 18:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

What's the proof? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.139.158.156 (talk) 12:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Open-source version playable online
I've made an open-source, Javascript-powered, computerised version of the game, which might be preferable to the closed-source, Java-powered version currently linked from the article (which has been "in beta" since 2000). However, it wouldn't be appropriate (SELFPUB) to do so myself. Therefore, I submit the following for consideration by other editors:


 * My version of Penney's Game
 * The source code

(for reference: my blog post about it) - Avapoet (talk) 14:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Probability table
I've just added a citation request as the stated probabilities are (ahem) at odds with those calculated using the formula given by one of the inventors of the game, given here:. This states that, eg, 7 tricks using RRB should win 82.7% of games, not 80.11% as stated. The values quoted may have been generated using a Monte Carlo method, rather than analytically, but they aren't reliable. Robma (talk) 22:12, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I've just tracked down Humble and Nishiyama's paper which also quotes simulations, and suggests the results are probably more indicative of real play. As these are in line with those in the original table, I have left the latter intact, and added a reference. Robma (talk) 08:04, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

No math?
This article currently explains none of the mathematics. For example, how was in concluded that the odds are in a certain instance 3-to-1, etc. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)