Related papers: Nimbers are inevitable

In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…

n infinite two-player zero-sum game with a Borel winning set, in which the opponent's actions are monitored eventually but not necessarily immediately after they are played, is determined. The proof relies on a representation of the game as…

For normal play, impartial games, we define penults as those positions in which every option results in an immediate win for the other player. We explore the number of tokens in penults of two positional games, Impartial Tic and Impartial…

This paper provides effective methods for the polyhedral formulation of impartial finite combinatorial games as lattice games. Given a rational strategy for a lattice game, a polynomial time algorithm is presented to decide (i) whether a…

We investigate the Sprague-Grundy sequences for two normal-play impartial games based on arithmetic functions, first described by Iannucci and Larsson in \cite{sum}. In each game, the set of positions is N (natural numbers). In saliquant,…

The traditional mathematical model for an impartial combinatorial game is defined recursively as a set of the options of the game, where the options are games themselves. We propose a model called gamegraph, together with its generalization…

The Nakamura number of a simple game plays a critical role in preference aggregation (or multi-criterion ranking): the number of alternatives that the players can always deal with rationally is less than this number. We comprehensively…

In this paper, we study nonzero-sum separable games, which are continuous games whose payoffs take a sum-of-products form. Included in this subclass are all finite games and polynomial games. We investigate the structure of equilibria in…

We provide a winning strategy for sums of games of MARK-t, an impartial game played on the nonnegative integers where each move consists of subtraction by an integer between 1 and t-1 inclusive, or division by t, rounding down when…

We study an impartial game introduced by Anderson and Harary. This game is played by two players who alternately choose previously-unselected elements of a finite group. The first player who builds a generating set from the jointly-selected…

This paper provides sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions for two-person zero-sum games with inf/sup-compact payoff functions and with possibly noncompact decision sets for both players. Payoff functions may be unbounded, and…

We introduce Row Impartial Terminus (RIT), an impartial combinatorial game played on integer partitions. We show that any position in RIT can be uniquely decomposed into a core and a remnant. Our central result is that the Conway pair of…

A finite impartial game is a two-player game in which the players take turns making moves and the game ends after finitely many moves. In this paper, we study a class of finite impartial games introduced by H.~Lenstra, which we call coin…

Coloring games are combinatorial games where the players alternate painting uncolored vertices of a graph one of $k > 0$ colors. Each different ruleset specifies that game's coloring constraints. This paper investigates six impartial…

A class of discrete Bidding Combinatorial Games that generalize alternating normal play was introduced by Kant, Larsson, Rai, and Upasany (2022). The major questions concerning optimal outcomes were resolved. By generalizing standard game…

We present a definition for the sum of a sequence of combinatorial games. This sum coincides with the classical sum in the case of a converging sequence of real numbers and with the infinitary natural sum in the case of a sequence of…

Usually, to apply game-theoretic methods, we must specify utilities precisely, and we run the risk that the solutions we compute are not robust to errors in this specification. Ordinal games provide an attractive alternative: they require…

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…

We announce misere-play solutions to several previously-unsolved combinatorial games. The solutions are described in terms of misere quotients--commutative monoids that encode the additive structure of specific misere-play games. We also…

We introduce a problem set-up we call the Iterated Matching Pennies (IMP) game and show that it is a powerful framework for the study of three problems: adversarial learnability, conventional (i.e., non-adversarial) learnability and…