Related papers: The Candy-Passing Game for c\geq3n-2

The game of memory is played with a deck of n pairs of cards. The cards in each pair are identical. The deck is shuffled and the cards laid face down. A move consists of flipping over first one card then another. The cards are removed from…

We present constructions regarding the general behaviour of biased positional games, and amongst others show that the outcome of such a game can differ in an arbitrary way depending on which player starts the game, and that fair biased…

On the blockchain, NFT games have risen in popularity, spawning new types of digital assets. We present a simplified version of well-known NFT games, followed by a discussion of issues influencing the structure and stability of generic…

Graph games lie at the algorithmic core of many automated design problems in computer science. These are games usually played between two players on a given graph, where the players keep moving a token along the edges according to…

A generalized `$15$ puzzle' consists of an $n \times n$ numbered grid, with one missing number. A move in the game switches the position of the empty square with the position of one of its neighbors. We solve Diaconis' `15 puzzle problem'…

Given $k\ge 3$ heaps of tokens. The moves of the 2-player game introduced here are to either take a positive number of tokens from at most $k-1$ heaps, or to remove the {\sl same} positive number of tokens from all the $k$ heaps. We analyse…

Winners-take-all situations introduce an incentive for agents to diversify their behavior, since doing so will result in splitting an eventual price with fewer people. At the same time, when the payoff of a process depends on a parameter…

We recall a combinatorial derivation of the functions generating probability of winnings for each of many participants of the Penney's game and show a generalization of the Conway's formula to this case.

Suppose that there are n bins, and balls arrive in a Poisson process at rate \lambda n, where \lambda >0 is a constant. Upon arrival, each ball chooses a fixed number d of random bins, and is placed into one with least load. Balls have…

Mean-payoff games on timed automata are played on the infinite weighted graph of configurations of priced timed automata between two players, Player Min and Player Max, by moving a token along the states of the graph to form an infinite…

We study a generalization of the Mermin-Peres magic square game to arbitrary rectangular dimensions. After exhibiting some general properties, these rectangular games are fully characterized in terms of their optimal win probabilities for…

Two losing gambling games, when alternated in a periodic or random fashion, can produce a winning game. This paradox has been inspired by certain physical systems capable of rectifying fluctuations: the so-called Brownian ratchets. In this…

We study graphs and two-player games in which rewards are assigned to states, and the goal of the players is to satisfy or dissatisfy certain property of the generated outcome, given as a mean payoff property. Since the notion of…

The principle of open determinacy for class games---two-player games of perfect information with plays of length $\omega$, where the moves are chosen from a possibly proper class, such as games on the ordinals---is not provable in…

We consider a two player simultaneous-move game where the two players each select any permissible $n$-sided die for a fixed integer $n$. A player wins if the outcome of his roll is greater than that of his opponent. Remarkably, for $n>3$,…

In the {\em Musical Chairs} game $MC(n,m)$ a team of $n$ players plays against an adversarial {\em scheduler}. The scheduler wins if the game proceeds indefinitely, while termination after a finite number of rounds is declared a win of the…

We study a random game in which two players in turn play a fixed number of moves. For each move, there are two possible choices. To each possible outcome of the game we assign a winner in an i.i.d. fashion with a fixed parameter p. In the…

In tug-of-war, two players compete by moving a counter along edges of a graph, each winning the right to move at a given turn according to the flip of a possibly biased coin. The game ends when the counter reaches the boundary, a fixed…

Quantum entanglement is known to provide a strong advantage in many two-party distributed tasks. We investigate the question of how much entanglement is needed to reach optimal performance. For the first time we show that there exists a…

Let a deck of n cards be shuffled by successively exchanging the cards in positions 1, 2, ..., n with cards in randomly chosen positions. We show that for n equal to 18 or greater, the identity permutation is the most likely. We prove a…