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arXiv · 2605.00194

The speed of convergence in greedy Galois games

Jeffrey Shallit
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Abstract

In 2013 Cooper and Dutle invented a dueling scenario where Alice and Bob shoot at each other until one is hit. Each shot is successful with some fixed probability $p$, $0 < p < 1$. The shooting order is given by a greedy algorithm, where at each step a shot is assigned to the player whose current probability of success is smaller. Cooper and Dutle observed that as $p \rightarrow 0$, the resulting sequence of shots (by Alice or Bob) converges to the infinite Thue-Morse sequence t, but left the speed of convergence as an open problem. In this note we determine the speed of this convergence.

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Jeffrey Shallit. 2026-04-30. The speed of convergence in greedy Galois games. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00194

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