[jsnell]

> Ballmer's argument is essentially about tail risk

Where are you getting that from? As far as I can tell, he makes no such arguments in the interview. The problem, and his explanation of the answer, are phrased purely in terms of expected value of a single iteration of the game. And the twist is the adversarial selection of the number, not risk of ruin.

It'd be an awful example of tail risk anyway. With the obvious strategy the tail is extremely fat.