Consider a sequence of Markov-dependent trials where each trial produces a letter of a finite alphabet. Given a collection of patterns, we look at this sequence until one of these patterns appears as a run. We show how the method of gambling teams can be employed to compute the probability that a given pattern is the first pattern to occur.

In this note we provide a simple alternative probabilistic derivation of an explicit formula of Kwan and Yang (2007) for the probability of ruin in a risk model with a certain dependence between general claim interoccurrence times and subsequent claim sizes of conditionally exponential type. The approach puts the type of formula in a general context, illustrating the potential for similar simple ruin probability expressions in more general risk models with dependence.