This short paper analyses a snakes and ladders game using Markov Chain theory to find the probability of winning/losing and expected playing time.

Abstract

Have you ever played a board game and for the longest time, you did not find a winner? In August 2024, during my volunteering in Kenya, I came across a board game that apparently took ’too long to win’. To understand why this is the case, this thesis borrows tools from the Markov Chain Theory to find that the expected playing time lies at approximately 42 turns per person. Further, it analyses the probabilities of winning /losing the game, concluding that it is almost twice as probable to win rather than land on the ’global extinction’ field.