A Note on the History of the Gambler's Ruin Problem

Abstract

This paper deals with the history of one of the well-known and historically important problems in probability, "Gambler's ruin". This problem was first solved by Pascal and Fermat and published by Huygens in 1657. It was studied and extended by many probabilists in early years and thus, it became an important problem in probability history, introducing many new concepts. We would like to introduce the problem in detail to readers and share the ideas on how new problems are developed, relating to old problems.