Bulgarian solitaire
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In mathematics and game theory, Bulgarian solitaire is a random card game.
In the game, a pack of N cards are divided into several piles. Then for each pile, either leave it intact or, with a fixed probability p, remove one card; collect the removed cards together to form a new pile (piles of zero size are ignored).
If p = 1, the game is known as Bulgarian solitaire or deterministic Bulgarian solitaire and was introduced by Martin Gardner; the general case with 0 < p < 1 is known as random Bulgarian solitaire or stochastic Bulgarian solitaire. This is a finite irreducible Markov chain.
If N is a triangular number (that is, 
for some k), then it is known that deterministic Bulgarian solitaire will reach a stable configuration in which the size of the piles is 
. This state is reached k2 − k moves or fewer. If N is not triangular, no stable configuration exists and a limit cycle is reached.
In 2004, Brazilian probabilist of Russian origin Serguei Popov showed that stochastic Bulgarian solitaire spends "most" of its time in a "roughly" triangular distribution.
[edit] References
- Serguei Popov (2005). "Random Bulgarian solitaire". Random Structures and Algorithms 27(3): 310–330.
- Ethan Akin and Morton Davis (1985). "Bulgarian solitaire". American Mathematical Monthly 92(4): 237–250.
