A tournament problem that's not really about tournaments

[Fnord]

Player A: Buys in for $40. He gets 400 chips. He has to quit when he runs out of chips or after 3 hours.
Player B: Buys in for $100. He gets 1000 chips. He can re-buy as many times as he wants or call it quits if he busts.

5/10 blinds that never increase.

Winner takes the entire prize pool. If Player A quits, then they chop it up per chip counts.

If they are equally skilled, who has the edge, why and how big is it?

[mcatdog]

Seems like a textbook example of gambler's fallacy to assume either player has an edge here.

[Hawk]

Sounds to me like player A would have the edge.

His losses are limited to $40, his gains are limited only by how much player B is willing to lose. He also faces the disadvantage of not being able to rebuy if he gets the bad end of a flip (or anything similar).

Player B can make, at most, $40, while he is at risk for losing much more.

I also expect that mcat might be right and I'm looking at this like a noob to gambling. If so, that's fine with me. After all, I'm a noob to gambling.

[MuddyWicket]

Player B clearly has the edge cos he has the superhuman power of regeneration in the middle of a battle while player A has to hide in a log cabin for 3 months before he can start again.

Given 2 coin flips Player B should win 1 where Player A can't afford to lose either.