Ask the Wizard #279

I have not published an Ask the Wizard question in almost three months. It was mostly due to being busy with the site upgrade, but also I've been having a hard time getting good questions.

Anyway, your long wait is over. Please have a look at column #279. As always, I welcome all comments, corrections. Many of the questions were culled from here. If you want to contribute to the topic matter of one of those threads, please following the link in the column and address it there. This thread should be for such things are typographical errors or suggestions on how to make my answer more clear.

Repeated word? Or maybe some word play on "recursion"?

Quote: from the answer to the first question

We can use recursion for more more consecutive losses.

There was an odd set of numbers that showed up after the "B" table in the first question's matrix calculation.

In the Doyle Brunson 10-2 question, I am a little confused by why the odds of making a full house on the river "two out of two times" is 1-in-43,006, instead of 1-in-42,849 (the odds of making a full house on the river (1-in-207)^2). An explanation would be helpful to me,... but hey, that's just me, Mr. Vegas....

Quote: Wizard

This thread should be for such things are typographical errors or suggestions on how to make my answer more clear.

I might change the first question to:

On average, how many trials on average will it take in a 50/50 game to lose? To lose two in a row? How about 3, 4, or k in a row?

Then explain the simplest case first x=1+.5x , x=2. On average it will take 2 trials to get a loss.

It makes the recursion formula N(k+1)=1+N(k) + 1/2*N(k+1) easier to understand if N(1)=2.