Related papers: The Unlucky Door
We study the complexity of solving two-player infinite duration games played on a fixed finite graph, where the control of a node is not predetermined but rather assigned randomly. In classic random-turn games, control of each node is…
The winning condition of a parity game with costs requires an arbitrary, but fixed bound on the cost incurred between occurrences of odd colors and the next occurrence of a larger even one. Such games quantitatively extend parity games…
The well-known three distance theorem states that there are at most three distinct gaps between consecutive elements in the set of the first n multiples of any real number. We generalise this theorem to higher dimensions under a suitable…
We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the…
We construct games of chance from simpler games of chance. We show that it may happen that the simpler games of chance are fair or unfavourable to a player andyet the new combined game is favourable -- this is a counter-intuitive…
Toral introduced so-called cooperative Parrondo games, in which there are N players (3 or more) arranged in a circle. At each turn one player is randomly chosen to play. He plays either game A or game B. Game A results in a win or loss of…
Something is definitely wrong. If the game has a linear winning strategy, then it is tractable. What's going on? Well, we describe a two-person game which has a definite winner, that is, a player who can force a win in a finite number of…
The multiplication game is a two-person game in which each player chooses a positive integer without knowledge of the other player's number. The two numbers are then multiplied together and the first digit of the product determines the…
In competitive adversarial environments, it is often advantageous to obfuscate one's strategies or capabilities. However, revealing one's strategic intentions may shift the dynamics of the competition in complex ways. Can it ever be…
A set of n boxes, located on the vertices of a hypergraph G, contain known but different rewards. A Searcher opens all the boxes in some hyperedge of G with the objective of collecting the maximum possible total reward. Some of the boxes,…
We show that solving delay games with winning conditions given by deterministic and nondeterministic weak Muller automata is 2EXPTIME-complete respectively 3EXPTIME-complete. Furthermore, doubly and triply exponential lookahead is necessary…
Consider the following probability puzzle: A fair coin is flipped n times. For each HT in the resulting sequence, Bob gets a point, and for each HH Alice gets a point. Who is more likely to win? We provide a proof that Bob wins more often…
How many fair coin tosses to choose 1 of $n$ options with uniform probability? Although a probability problem, the solution is essentially number-theoretic, with special roles for Mersenne numbers, Fermat numbers, and the haupt exponent. We…
The iterated prisoner's dilemma is a game that produces many counter-intuitive and complex behaviors in a social environment, based on very simple basic rules. It illustrates that cooperation can be a good thing even in a competitive world,…
Humanity has been fascinated by the pursuit of fortune since time immemorial, and many successful outcomes benefit from strokes of luck. But success is subject to complexity, uncertainty, and change - and at times becoming increasingly…
We consider the following simple game: We are given a table with ten slots indexed one to ten. In each of the ten rounds of the game, three dice are rolled and the numbers are added. We then put this number into any free slot. For each…
In a recent article in American Scientist, Theodore Hill described a coin-tossing game whose pay-off is the number of heads over the total number of throws. Suppose that at a given point during the game you have 5 heads and 3 tails, should…
This paper considers information sharing in a multi-player repeated game. Every round, each player observes a subset of components of a random vector and then takes a control action. The utility earned by each player depends on the full…
Positional games are a well-studied class of combinatorial game. In their usual form, two players take turns to play moves in a set (`the board'), and certain subsets are designated as `winning': the first person to occupy such a set wins…
This recreational mathematics article shows that the game of Snakes and Ladders is intransitive: square 69 has a winning edge over 79, which in turn beats 73, which beats 69. Analysis of the game is a nice illustration of Markov chains,…