Stopping times in the game Rock-Paper-Scissors

Abstract

In this paper we compute the stopping times in the game Rock-Paper-Scissors. By exploiting the recurrence relation we compute the mean values of stopping times. On the other hand, by constructing a transition matrix for a Markov chain associated with the game, we get also the distribution of the stopping times and thereby we compute the mean stopping times again. Then we show that the mean stopping times increase exponentially fast as the number of the participants increases.