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We construct several definitions of imbalance and playability, both of which are related to the existence of dominated strategies. Specifically, a maximally balanced game and a playable game cannot have dominated strategies for any player.…

General Economics · Economics 2025-11-07 Itai Maimon

This paper introduces alignment games, a new class of zero-sum games modeling strategic interventions where effectiveness depends on alignment with an underlying hidden state. Motivated by operational problems in medical diagnostics,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-08 Pedro Cesar Lopes Gerum , Thomas Lidbetter

Subtraction games have a rich literature as normal-play combinatorial games (e.g., Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy, 1982). Recently, the theory has been extended to zero-sum scoring play (Cohensius et al. 2019). Here, we take the approach of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-22 Anjali Bhagat , Tanmay Kulkarni , Urban Larsson , Divya Murali

Optimal behavior in (competitive) situation is traditionally determined with the help of utility functions that measure the payoff of different actions. Given an ordering on the space of revenues (payoffs), the classical axiomatic approach…

General Economics · Economics 2020-04-27 Stefan Rass

Policy-based methods with function approximation are widely used for solving two-player zero-sum games with large state and/or action spaces. However, it remains elusive how to obtain optimization and statistical guarantees for such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-01 Yulai Zhao , Yuandong Tian , Jason D. Lee , Simon S. Du

In two-player zero-sum stochastic games, where two competing players make decisions under uncertainty, a pair of optimal strategies is traditionally described by Nash equilibrium and computed under the assumption that the players have…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-30 Yagiz Savas , Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Takashi Tanaka , Ufuk Topcu

We consider extensive form win-lose games over a complete binary-tree of depth $n$ where players act in an alternating manner. We study arguably the simplest random structure of payoffs over such games where 0/1 payoffs in the leafs are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-11 Urban Larsson , Yakov Babichenko

We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-04 Tim Rammenstein

By results of Dantzig (1951) and Adler (2013), computing the optimal solutions of a linear program is equivalent to finding optimal strategies in zero-sum bimatrix games. Dantzig's original result was incomplete, in the sense that the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-27 Jesse Elliott , Constantin Ickstadt , Thorsten Theobald , Elias Tsigaridas

This paper analyzes a simple game with $n$ players. We fix a mean, $\mu$, in the interval $[0, 1]$ and let each player choose any random variable distributed on that interval with the given mean. The winner of the zero-sum game is the…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-04-24 Artem Hulko , Mark Whitmeyer

The optimal value computation for turned-based stochastic games with reachability objectives, also known as simple stochastic games, is one of the few problems in $NP \cap coNP$ which are not known to be in $P$. However, there are some…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2014-08-10 David Auger , Pierre COUCHENEY , Yann Strozecki

We consider two-player normal form games where each player has the same finite strategy set. The payoffs of each player are assumed to be i.i.d. random variables with a continuous distribution. We show that, with high probability, the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-11-03 Ben Amiet , Andrea Collevecchio , Kais Hamza

Recently, Press and Dyson have proposed a new class of probabilistic and conditional strategies for the two-player iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, so-called zero-determinant strategies. A player adopting zero-determinant strategies is able to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-02-17 Liming Pan , Dong Hao , Zhihai Rong , Tao Zhou

We introduce and analyze the ordered Zeckendorf game, a novel combinatorial two-player game inspired by Zeckendorf's Theorem, which guarantees a unique decomposition of every positive integer as a sum of non-consecutive Fibonacci numbers.…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Ivan Bortnovskyi , Michael Lucas , Steven J. Miller , Iana Vranesko , Ren Watson , Cameron White

We study two-player multi-weighted reachability games played on a finite directed graph, where an agent, called P1, has several quantitative reachability objectives that he wants to optimize against an antagonistic environment, called P2.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Thomas Brihaye , Aline Goeminne

Matrix games constitute a fundamental problem of game theory and describe a situation of two players with completely conflicting interests. We show how methods from statistical mechanics can be used to investigate the statistical properties…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2009-10-31 J. Berg , A. Engel

Stackelberg equilibrium is a solution concept that describes optimal strategies to commit: Player 1 (the leader) first commits to a strategy that is publicly announced, then Player 2 (the follower) plays a best response to the leader's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-04 Aditya Aradhye , Branislav Bošanský , Michael Hlaváček

Priced timed games are optimal-cost reachability games played between two players---the controller and the environment---by moving a token along the edges of infinite graphs of configurations of priced timed automata. The goal of the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2015-07-22 Shibashis Guha , Shankara Narayanan Krishna , Lakshmi Manasa , Ashutosh Trivedi

A new solution concept for two-player zero-sum matrix games with multi-dimensional payoff is introduced. It is based on extensions of vector orders in K-dimensional spaces to order relations in their power sets, so-called set relations, and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-01-31 Andreas H. Hamel , Andreas Loehne

In two-player finite-state stochastic games of partial observation on graphs, in every state of the graph, the players simultaneously choose an action, and their joint actions determine a probability distribution over the successor states.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-07-13 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Laurent Doyen