Two players alternate throwing a six-sided die. The first player who fails to roll a higher number than the preceding roll loses. What is the probability that the first player wins?

What if the die is n-sided?

(In reply to General Result by Steve Herman)

It's unfortunate that your login can time out without you being aware of it until you "save" and find out it didn't work.  I now (when I remember to, anyway) highlight my final text and do Control-C to copy it to the clipboard before I hit save. Then if the save doesn't work, I still have my text on the clipboard.  Also, I frequently use a text editor offline and finally copy from it to the comment-posting window.

Posted by Richard on 2005-04-08 19:11:26