Finiteness of the playing time in 'Beggar-my-neighbour' card game

Abstract

It is proved that in card games similar to 'Beggar-my-neighbour' the mathematical expectation of the playing time is finite, provided that the player who starts the round is determined randomly and the deck is shuffled when the trick is added. The result holds for the generic setting of the game.

arXiv commentThe paper has been submitted to the Problems of Information Transmission. It will appear in English in the English version of the journal