Related papers: How to Lose with Least Probability
The game of Hex has two players who take turns placing stones of their respective colors on the hexagons of a rhombus-shaped hexagonal grid. Black wins by completing a crossing between two opposite edges, while White wins by completing a…
Let $n, k$ be positive integers. The $(k+1)$-star avoidance game on $K_n$ is played as follows. Two players take it in turn to claim a (previously unclaimed) edge of the complete graph on $n$ vertices. The first player to claim all edges of…
We start with the well-known game below: Two players hold a sheet of paper to their forehead on which a positive integer is written. The numbers are consecutive and each player can only see the number of the other one. In each time step,…
We investigate zero-sum turn-based two-player stochastic games in which the objective of one player is to maximize the amount of rewards obtained during a play, while the other aims at minimizing it. We focus on games in which the minimizer…
Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe is a variant of the popular Tic-Tac-Toe game. Two players compete to win three aligned "fields," with each field constituting its own miniature tic-tac-toe game. Each move determines which field the next player must…
This paper deals with the application of Approximation Theory type techniques to study a classical problem in Probability: estimating the parameter of a biased coin. For this purpose, a Minimax Estimation problem is considered and the…
Suppose a gambler starts with a fortune in (0,1) and wishes to attain a fortune of 1 by making a sequence of bets. Assume thay whenever the gambler stakes the amount s, the gambler's fortune increases by s with probability w and decreases…
We consider Lionel Levine's notorious hat puzzle with two players. Each player has a stack of hats on their head, and each hat is chosen independently to be either black or white. After observing only the other player's hats, players…
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…
We study a variation of the minority game. There are N agents. Each has to choose between one of two alternatives everyday, and there is reward to each member of the smaller group. The agents cannot communicate with each other, but try to…
Consider the following game between a random player R and a deterministic player D. There is a pile of n elements at the beginning. The rules for playing are as follows: In each turn of R, if the pile contains exactly m elements, R removes…
In his list of open problems, Martin Erickson described a certain game: "Two players alternately put queens on an n x n chess board so that each new queen is not in range of any queen already on the board (the color of the queens is…
This work explains how to utilize earlier results by P. Diaconis, K. Houston-Edwards and the second author to estimate probabilities related to the 4-player gambler ruin problem. For instance, we show that the probability that a very…
We analyze the dynamics of competitions with a large number of players. In our model, n players compete against each other and the winner is decided based on the standings: in each competition, the mth ranked player wins. We solve for the…
We study the following game. Three players start with initial capitals of $s_{1},s_{2},s_{3}$ dollars; in each round player $P_{m}$ is selected with probability $\frac{1}{3}$; then \emph{he} selects player $P_{n}$ and they play a game in…
We define a variant of the two-dimensional Silver Dollar game. Two coins are placed on a chessboard of unbounded size, and two players take turns choosing one of the coins and moving it. Coins are to be moved to the left or upward…
At some places (see the references) Martin Erickson describes a certain game: "Two players alternately write O's (first player) and X's (second player) in the unoccupied cells of an n x n grid. The first player (if any) to occupy four cells…
It is known that a player in a noncooperative game can benefit by publicly restricting his possible moves before play begins. We show that, more generally, a player may benefit by publicly committing to pay an external party an amount that…
We consider the weighted version of the Tron game on graphs where two players, Alice and Bob, each build their own path by claiming one vertex at a time, starting with Alice. The vertices carry non-negative weights that sum up to 1 and…
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…