Do quantum strategies always win?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether quantum strategies always outperform classical ones in a modified quantum penny flip game, revealing scenarios where classical strategies can beat quantum strategies depending on the classical player's mixed strategy.

Contribution

It introduces a modified quantum game with shared entanglement and analyzes how classical mixed strategies can sometimes outperform quantum strategies, challenging the assumption of quantum advantage.

Findings

Quantum player always wins against pure classical strategies.

Classical mixed strategies can reduce quantum advantage significantly.

Under certain probabilities, classical strategies can beat quantum strategies.

Abstract

In a seminal paper, Meyer [David Meyer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1052 (1999)] described the advantages of quantum game theory by looking at the classical penny flip game. A player using a quantum strategy can win against a classical player almost 100\% of the time. Here we make a slight modification to the quantum game, with the two players sharing an entangled state to begin with. We then analyze two different scenarios, first in which quantum player makes unitary transformations to his qubit while the classical player uses a pure strategy of either flipping or not flipping the state of his qubit. In this case the quantum player always wins against the classical player. In the second scenario we have the quantum player making similar unitary transformations while the classical player makes use of a mixed strategy wherein he either flips or not with some probability "p". We show that in the second scenario, 100\% win record of a quantum player is drastically reduced and for a particular probability "p" the classical player can even win against the quantum player. This is of possible relevance to the field of quantum computation as we show that in this quantum game of preserving versus destroying entanglement a particular classical algorithm can beat the quantum algorithm.