Related papers: An n-in-a-row Game
This work is concerned with the study of the Game of Graph Nim -- a class of two-player combinatorial games -- on graphs with $4$ edges. To each edge of such a graph is assigned a positive-integer-valued edge-weight, and during each round…
A general position set of a graph $G$ is a set of vertices $S$ in $G$ such that no three vertices from $S$ lie on a common shortest path. In this paper we introduce and study the general position achievement game. The game is played on a…
A circular Nim game is a two player impartial combinatorial game consisting of n stacks of tokens placed in a circle. A move consists of choosing k consecutive stacks, and taking at least one token from one or more of the k stacks. The last…
In many combinatorial games, one can prove that the first player wins under best play using a simple but non-constructive argument called strategy-stealing. This work is about the complexity behind these proofs: how hard is it to actually…
The graph grabbing game is played on a non-negatively weighted connected graph by Alice and Bob who alternately claim a non-cut vertex from the remaining graph, where Alice plays first, to maximize the weights on their respective claimed…
We introduce a new variation of the m-player asymmetric Colonel Blotto game, where the n battles occur as sequential stages of the game, and the winner of each stage needs to spend resources for maintaining his win. The limited resources of…
Two-player graph games are a fundamental model for reasoning about the interaction of agents. These games are played between two players who move a token along a graph. In bidding games, the players have some monetary budget, and at each…
Infinite chess is chess played on an infinite edgeless chessboard. The familiar chess pieces move about according to their usual chess rules, and each player strives to place the opposing king into checkmate. The mate-in-n problem of…
We consider the recently introduced knotting-unknotting game, in which two players take turns resolving crossings in a knot diagram which initially is missing all its crossing information. Once the knot is fully resolved, the winner is…
Let A be a finite subset of the naturals and let n be a natural. Let NIM(A;n) be the two player game in which players alternate removing $a\in A$ stones from a pile with $n$ stones; the first player who cannot move loses. This game has been…
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…
In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…
Infinite games where several players seek to coordinate under imperfect information are known to be intractable, unless the information flow is severely restricted. Examples of undecidable cases typically feature a situation where players…
We characterize the initial positions from which the first player has a winning strategy in a certain two-player game. This provides a generalization of Hall's theorem. Vizing's edge coloring theorem follows from a special case.
In set theory without the axiom of regularity, we consider a game in which two players choose in turn an element of a given set, an element of this element, etc.; a player wins if its adversary cannot make any next move. Sets that are…
Fix two integers $n, k$, with $n$ divisible by $k$, and consider the following game played by two players, Waiter and Client, on the edges of $K_n$. Starting with all the edges marked as unclaimed, in each round, Waiter picks two yet…
Poker is a family of card games that includes many variations. We hypothesize that most poker games can be solved as a pattern matching problem, and propose creating a strong poker playing system based on a unified poker representation. Our…
We propose a new model of provenance, based on a game-theoretic approach to query evaluation. First, we study games G in their own right, and ask how to explain that a position x in G is won, lost, or drawn. The resulting notion of game…
The game of Knockout is a classic playground game played with two basketballs. This paper uses a Markov process to analyze each player's probability of winning the game given their starting position in line and shooting percentages,…
We introduce a two-player game in which one and his/her opponent attempt to pack as many ``prisoners'' as possible on the squares of an n-by-n checkerboard; each prisoner has to be ``protected'' by at least as many guards as the number of…