Question

In the game of Lucky Sevens, the player rolls a pair of dice. If the dots add up to 7, the player wins $4; otherwise, the player loses $1.

Suppose that, to entice the gullible, a casino tells players that there are lots of ways to win: (1, 6), (2, 5), and so on. A little mathematical analysis reveals that there are not enough ways to win to make the game worthwhile; however, because many people’s eyes glaze over at the first mention of mathematics, your challenge is to write a program that demonstrates the futility of playing the game.

Your program should take as input the amount of money that the player wants to put into the pot, and using a random number generator play the game until the pot is empty. At that point, the program should print:

1. The number of rolls it took to break the player
2. The maximum amount of money in the pot.

An example of the program input and output is shown below:

How many dollars do you have? 50

You are broke after 220 rolls.
You should have quit after 6 rolls when you had $59.

Answer 1

Working code implemented in Python and appropriate comments provided for better understanding.

main.py Source Code:

from random import randint

# Get the initial pot and initialize the roll count
max_pot = pot = int(input("How many dollars do you have? "))
max_pot_roll = num_rolls = 0

# Play the game
while pot > 0:
# Roll two dice
die1 = randint(1, 6)
die2 = randint(1, 6)
num_rolls += 1

# Win if sum = 7, worth $4, else lose 41
if die1 + die2 == 7:
pot += 4

# keep track of best point to quit
if pot > max_pot:
max_pot = pot
max_pot_roll = num_rolls
else:
pot -= 1

print("You are broke after", str(num_rolls), "rolls.")
print("You should have quit after", str(max_pot_roll), "rolls when you had $" + str(max_pot) + ".")

Sample Output Screenshots: