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Reversals of chance in paradoxical games

Amengual, P.; Meurs, P.; Cleuren B.; Toral, R.
Physica A 371, 641-648 (2006)

We present two collective games with new paradoxical features when they are combined. Besides reproducing the so-called Parrondo effect, where a winning game is obtained from the alternation of two fair games, there also exists a current inversion when varying the mixing probability between the games. We show that this is a new effect insofar one of the games is an unbiased random walk without internal structure. We present a detailed study by means of a discrete-time Markov chain analysis, obtaining analytical expressions for the stationary probabilities for a finite number of players. We also provide qualitative insight into this current inversion effect.