How to Win at (One-Round) War
Richard E. Chatwin, Dana N. Mackenzie · College Mathematics Journal · 2015
SummaryOne-Round War is a card game with a variable deck size that is easy enough to teach to young children. For any given number of cards in the deck, the authors find an optimal strategy, in the sense of maximizing the expected number of tricks won. The threecard version of this problem is, in effect, nearly 2500 years old and was “solved” by Sun Bin, a legendary Chinese military strategist. The general solution calls upon a surprising variety of techniques from combinatorics and analysis, including the central limit theorem and the Hungarian algorithm.