Snakes and Ladders - Simulation, Markov Chains, and Board Design

Lately, my son has been obsessed with the game of Snakes and Ladders. So much so that he made it a mission to win the game first before he does any thing else. Watching him play so many games, I got curious about the game mechanics and design. In this post I explored questions like - what is the expected number of turns in a game, what a boring Snakes and Ladders board with extremely low variance…