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Rock Paper Scissors

A game of rock paper scissors consists of several rounds (players continue to play rounds until one player wins). In one round of rock paper scissors, two players each choose one of three options (rock, paper, or scissors). If they choose two different options, the game ends (rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock). If both players choose the same option, the game continues for another round. Assume each player chooses rock, paper or scissors uniformly at random and independently.

  1. What is the distribution of number of rounds played in a single game?
  2. What is the expected number of rounds in a game? What is the standard deviation of number of rounds in a game?
  3. Let \(n\) be the number of games played. How big must \(n\) be to ensure at least 100 rounds are played with 90% probability? Use an appropriate approximation to estimate.

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