How strong can the Parrondo effect be? II

Abstract

Parrondo's coin-tossing games comprise two games, $A$ and $B$. The result of game $A$ is determined by the toss of a fair coin. The result of game $B$ is determined by the toss of a $p_0$-coin if capital is a multiple of $r$, and by the toss of a $p_1$-coin otherwise. In either game, the player wins one unit with heads and loses one unit with tails. Game $B$ is fair if $(1-p_0)(1-p_1{)}^{r-1}=p_0{p}_1^{r-1}$. In a previous paper we showed that, if the parameters of game $B$, namely $r$, $p_0$, and $p_1$, are allowed to be arbitrary, subject to the fairness constraint, and if the two (fair) games $A$ and $B$ are played in an arbitrary periodic sequence, then the rate of profit can not only be positive (the so-called Parrondo effect), but also be arbitrarily close to 1 (i.e., 100%). Here we prove the same conclusion for a random sequence of the two games instead of a periodic one, that is, at each turn game $A$ is played with probability $\gamma$ and game $B$ is played otherwise, where $\gamma \in (0,1)$ is arbitrary.

12 pages

References in corpus (1)

• Optimal sequence for Parrondo games