Related papers: Matching expectations

This paper is about the following question: How many riffle shuffles mix a deck of card for games such as blackjack and bridge? An object that comes up in answering this question is the descent polynomial associated with pairs of decks,…

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…

A valuation for a player in a game in extensive form is an assignment of numeric values to the players moves. The valuation reflects the desirability moves. We assume a myopic player, who chooses a move with the highest valuation.…

We consider a deterministic game with alternate moves and complete information, of which the issue is always the victory of one of the two opponents. We assume that this game is the realization of a random model enjoying some independence…

Direct reciprocity is a wide-spread mechanism for evolution of cooperation. In repeated interactions, players can condition their behavior on previous outcomes. A well known approach is given by reactive strategies, which respond to the…

In a monotonic sequence game, two players alternately choose elements of a sequence from some fixed ordered set. The game ends when the resulting sequence contains either an ascending subsequence of length a or a descending one of length d.…

We consider a matching problem, which is meaningful in team competitions, as well as in information theory, recommender systems, and assignment problems. In the competitions which we study, each competitor in a team order plays a match with…

In this paper we study a cooperative card game called Hanabi from the viewpoint of algorithmic combinatorial game theory. In Hanabi, each card has one among $c$ colors and a number between $1$ and $n$. The aim is to make, for each color, a…

In this paper we introduce a Linear Program (LP) based formulation of a Rendezvous game with markers on the infinite line and solve it. In this game one player moves at unit speed while the second player moves at a speed bounded by vmax…

This paper investigates repeated win-lose coordination games (WLC-games). We analyse which protocols are optimal for these games covering both the worst case and average case scenarios, i,e., optimizing the guaranteed and expected…

We study concurrent stochastic reachability games played on finite graphs. Two players, Max and Min, seek respectively to maximize and minimize the probability of reaching a set of target states. We prove that Max has a memoryless strategy…

In games with a large number of players where players may have overlapping objectives, the analysis of stable outcomes typically depends on player types. A special case is when a large part of the player population consists of imitation…

We study infinite two-player games where one of the players is unsure about the set of moves available to the other player. In particular, the set of moves of the other player is a strict superset of what she assumes it to be. We explore…

Stochastic games are a natural model for the synthesis of controllers confronted to adversarial and/or random actions. In particular, $\omega$-regular games of infinite length can represent reactive systems which are not expected to reach a…

Multi-round competitions often double or triple the points awarded in the final round, calling it a bonus, to maximize spectators' excitement. In a two-player competition with $n$ rounds, we aim to derive the optimal bonus size to maximize…

The best known lower and upper bounds on the mixing time for the random-to-random insertions shuffle are $(1/2-o(1))n\log n$ and $(2+o(1))n\log n$. A long standing open problem is to prove that the mixing time exhibits a cutoff. In…

For any odd integer $n\geq3$ a board (of size $n$) is a square array of $n\times n$ positions with a simple rule of how to move between positions. The goal of the game we introduce is to find a path from the upper left corner of a board to…

We calculated a fixed strategy that minimizes the average number of guesses (minimum strategy) for the number-guessing game MOO by exhaustive search. Although the minimum strategy for a similar game, mastermind, has been reported, this…

We consider concurrent games played on graphs. At every round of a game, each player simultaneously and independently selects a move; the moves jointly determine the transition to a successor state. Two basic objectives are the safety…

Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe is a variant of the well known tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) board game. Two players compete to win three aligned "fields", each of them being a tic-tac-toe game. Each move determines which field the next player…