Related papers: Computer analysis of Sprouts with nimbers
We consider a variant of the game of Brussels Sprouts that, like Conway's original version, ends in a predetermined number of moves. We show that the endstates of the game are in natural bijection with noncrossing trees and that the game…
We consider two-player games played on finite graphs equipped with costs on edges and introduce two winning conditions, cost-parity and cost-Streett, which require bounds on the cost between requests and their responses. Both conditions…
Inspired by the theory of poset games, we introduce a new compound of impartial combinatorial games and provide a complete analysis in the spirit of the Sprague-Grundy theory. Furthermore, we establish several substitution and reduction…
Two-player stochastic games are games with two 2 players and a randomised entity called "nature". A natural question to ask in this framework is the existence of strategies that ensure that an event happens with probability 1 (almost-sure…
We consider the problem of estimating `preference' or `strength' parameters in three-way comparison experiments, each composed of a series of paired comparisons, but where only the single `preferred' or `strongest' candidate is known in…
We show that the maximum success probability of players sharing quantum entanglement in a two-player game with classical questions of logarithmic length and classical answers of constant length is NP-hard to approximate to within constant…
We analyze a game introduced by Andy Niedermaier, where $p$ players take turns throwing a dart at a dartboard. A player is eliminated unless his dart lands closer to the center than all previously thrown darts, in which case he goes to the…
Parrondo's paradox was introduced by Juan Parrondo in 1996. In game theory, this paradox is described as: A combination of losing strategies becomes a winning strategy. At first glance, this paradox is quite surprising, but we can easily…
The problem of scheduling tasks on $p$ processors so that no task ever gets too far behind is often described as a game with cups and water. In the $p$-processor cup game on $n$ cups, there are two players, a filler and an emptier, that…
In the natural generalization of tic-tac-toe to an $n \times n \times n$ board where $n \in \mathbb{N}$, it is known that the first player has a winning strategy if $n \leq 4$ and that either player can force a draw if $n \geq 8$. The…
Mirror games were invented by Garg and Schnieder (ITCS 2019). Alice and Bob take turns (with Alice playing first) in declaring numbers from the set {1,2, ...2n}. If a player picks a number that was previously played, that player loses and…
The notion of shuffle-compatible permutation statistics was implicit in Stanley's work on P-partitions and was first explicitly studied by Gessel and Zhuang. The aim of this paper is to prove that the triple ${\rm (udr, pk, des)}$ is…
In this paper we solve the three-player-game question. A three-player-game consists of a series of rounds. There are altogether three players. Two players participate in each round, at the end of the round the loser quits and the third…
Regular games form a well-established class of games for analysis and synthesis of reactive systems. They include coloured Muller games, McNaughton games, Muller games, Rabin games, and Streett games. These games are played on directed…
We study remoteness function $\mathcal R$ of impartial games introduced by Smith in 1966. The player who moves from a position $x$ can win if and only if $\mathcal R(x)$ is odd. The odd values of $\mathcal R(x)$ show how soon the winner can…
The physics-based simulation game Angry Birds has been heavily researched by the AI community over the past five years, and has been the subject of a popular AI competition that is currently held annually as part of a leading AI conference.…
We study a game where one player selects a random function, and the other has to guess that function, and show that with high probability the second player can correctly guess most of the random function. We apply this analysis to…
Computational Social Choice (ComSoc) is a rapidly developing field at the intersection of computer science, economics, social choice, and political science. The study of tournaments is fundamental to ComSoc and many results have been…
The dollar game is a chip-firing game introduced by Baker and Norine (2007) as a context in which to formulate and prove the Riemann-Roch theorem for graphs. A divisor on a graph is a formal integer sum of vertices. Each determines a dollar…
This is an introduction into John Conway's beautiful Combinatorial Game Theory, providing precise statements and detailed proofs for the fundamental parts of his theory. (1) Combinatorial game theory, (2) the GROUP of games, (3) the FIELD…