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We consider games played on finite graphs, whose goal is to obtain a trace belonging to a given set of winning traces. We focus on those states from which Player 1 cannot force a win. We explore and compare several criteria for establishing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2008-11-12 Marco Faella

The Sprague-Grundy (SG) theory reduces the sum of impartial games to the classical game of $NIM$. We generalize the concept of sum and introduce $\cH$-combinations of impartial games for any hypergraph $\cH$. In particular, we introduce the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-01-12 Endre Boros , Vladimir Gurvich , Nhan Bao Ho , Kazuhisa Makino , Peter Mursic

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-17 Masao Ishikawa , Toyokazu Ohmoto , Hiroyuki Tagawa , Yoshiki Takayama

Motivated by a problem posed by Aldous, our goal is to find the maximal-entropy win-martingale: In a sports game between two teams, the chance the home team wins is initially $x_0 \in (0,1)$ and finally 0 or 1. As an idealization we take a…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-07-04 Julio Backhoff-Veraguas , Mathias Beiglboeck

For impartial games $\Gamma$ and $\Gamma'$, the Sprague-Grundy function of the disjunctive sum $\Gamma + \Gamma'$ is equal to the Nim-sum of their Sprague-Grundy functions. In this paper, we introduce $p$-calm subtraction games, and show…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-01-13 Yuki Irie

We present a fast numerical algorithm for large scale zero-sum stochastic games with perfect information, which combines policy iteration and algebraic multigrid methods. This algorithm can be applied either to a true finite state space…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Marianne Akian , Sylvie Detournay

The Maker-Breaker domination game is a positional game played on a graph by two players called Dominator and Staller. The players alternately select a vertex of the graph that has not yet been chosen. Dominator wins if at some point the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-06-24 Guillaume Bagan , Eric Duchêne , Valentin Gledel , Tuomo Lehtilä , Aline Parreau

In this paper, we formalize Sprague-Grundy theory for combinatorial games in bounded arithmetic. We show that in the presence of Sprague-Grundy numbers, a fairly weak axioms capture PSPACE.

Logic · Mathematics 2016-09-09 Satoru Kuroda

Arithmetic functions in Number Theory meet the Sprague-Grundy function from Combinatorial Game Theory. We study a variety of 2-player games induced by standard arithmetic functions, such as Euclidian division, divisors, remainders and…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2021-07-06 Douglas E. Iannucci , Urban Larsson

We investigate the complexity of finding a winning strategy for the mis\`ere version of three games played on graphs : two variants of the game $\text{NimG}$, introduced by Stockmann in 2004 and the game $\text{Vertex Geography}$ on both…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-05-05 Gabriel Renault , Simon Schmidt

Given $n$ piles of tokens and a positive integer $k \leq n$, the game Nim$^1_{n, =k}$ of exact slow $k$-Nim is played as follows. Two players move alternately. In each move, a player chooses exactly $k$ non-empty piles and removes one token…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-02-09 Nikolay Chikin , Vladimir Gurvich , Konstantin Knop , Mike Paterson , Michael Vyalyi

We study zero-sum games, a variant of the classical combinatorial Subtraction games (studied for example in the monumental work "Winning Ways", by Berlekamp, Conway and Guy), called Cumulative Subtraction (CS). Two players alternate in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-02-14 Gal Cohensius , Urban Larsson , Reshef Meir , David Wahlstedt

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…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Alexander Weinert , Martin Zimmermann

This work is a contribution to the study of rewrite games. Positions are finite words, and the possible moves are defined by a finite number of local rewriting rules. We introduce and investigate taking-and-merging games, that is, where…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Eric Duchêne , Victor Marsault , Aline Parreau , Michel Rigo

Stochastic games are an important class of problems that generalize Markov decision processes to game theoretic scenarios. We consider finite state two-player zero-sum stochastic games over an infinite time horizon with discounted rewards.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2008-06-17 Parikshit Shah , Pablo A. Parrilo

This paper studies a class of approach-evasion differential games, in which one player aims to steer the state of a dynamic system to the given target set in minimum time, while avoiding some set of disallowed states, and the other player…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-10-01 Erich Mueller , Minghui Zhu , Sertac Karaman , Emilio Frazzoli

In an impartial combinatorial game, both players have the same options in the game and all its subpositions. The classical Sprague-Grundy Theory was developed for short impartial games, where players have a finite number of options, there…

Simple stochastic games are turn-based 2.5-player zero-sum graph games with a reachability objective. The problem is to compute the winning probability as well as the optimal strategies of both players. In this paper, we compare the three…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-21 Jan Kretinsky , Emanuel Ramneantu , Alexander Slivinskiy , Maximilian Weininger

The class of Guaranteed Scoring Games (GS) are two-player combinatorial games with the property that Normal-play games (Conway et. al.) are ordered embedded into GS. They include, as subclasses, the scoring games considered by Milnor…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-06-01 Urban Larsson , João P. Neto , Richard J. Nowakowski , Carlos P. Santos

Estimating discrete games of complete information is often computationally difficult due to partial identification and the absence of closed-form moment characterizations. This paper proposes computationally tractable approaches to…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-10-02 Paul S. Koh