Five prisoners are going to take beans from a bag with 100 beans. They will do it one prisoner at a time, and only once each. No communication is allowed between them, but they can count the beans left in the bag. All prisoners who end with the largest and the smallest number of beans will die.

Who is most likely to survive?

Assume:
1. they are all smart people.
2. they will try to survive first and then try to kill more people.
3. they do not need to take out all the 100 beans.

No player will try to outtake the other players up to that point, as then other players can simply take fewer beans and ensure that player dies.

This means nobody will ever take more beans than player 1. So player 1 will definitely die. Since he won't survive, he'll take all the beans to make sure everyone dies.

Posted by Gamer on 2008-10-16 20:44:55