Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel …
The classic Hannukah game is painfully slow. It’s time to speed it up.
...Ultimately, I ran 50,000 simulations of 171 different starting conditions, for a grand total of 8.5 million simulated dreidel games. Here’s what I mean by starting conditions: one starting condition was a game of six players with 10 tokens each. Another was a game of three people with 15 pieces each. All assumed eight seconds per spin, and, again out of generosity to dreidel, I assumed there was no delay between player turns.
Based on my calculations, if four players start with 10 pieces each, the game will last more than 1 hour and 54 minutes to complete. Perhaps if you were waiting out a siege by the Seleucid Empire this would be ideal, but two hours is excessive if you’re just trying to kill 30 minutes before the latkes are ready.
