Related papers: Complete Solutions for a Combinatorial Puzzle in L…
Recently the matcher game was introduced. In this game, two players create a maximal matching by one player repeatedly choosing a vertex and the other player choosing a $K_2$ containing that vertex. One player tries to minimize the result…
Bachet's game is a variant of the game of Nim. There are $n$ objects in one pile. Two players take turns to remove any positive number of objects not exceeding some fixed number $m$. The player who takes the last object loses. We consider a…
Coordination in multiplayer games enables players to avoid the lose-lose outcome that often arises at Nash equilibria. However, designing a coordination mechanism typically requires the consideration of the joint actions of all players,…
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…
A class of discrete Bidding Combinatorial Games that generalize alternating normal play was introduced by Kant, Larsson, Rai, and Upasany (2022). The major questions concerning optimal outcomes were resolved. By generalizing standard game…
For matrix games we study how small nonzero probability must be used in optimal strategies. We show that for nxn win-lose-draw games (i.e. (-1,0,1) matrix games) nonzero probabilities smaller than n^{-O(n)} are never needed. We also…
The security game is a basic model for resource allocation in adversarial environments. Here there are two players, a defender and an attacker. The defender wants to allocate her limited resources to defend critical targets and the attacker…
In games with imperfect recall, players may forget the sequence of decisions they made in the past. When players also forget whether they have already encountered their current decision point, they are said to be absent-minded. Solving…
In this paper we describe several player preferences in games with $N \geq 2$ players, in particular the case $N = 3$, and use them to simplify game trees, using the game of Clobber as our example. We show that, using a fixed starting…
This paper studies sequential quantum games under the assumption that the moves of the players are drawn from groups and not just plain sets. The extra group structure makes possible to easily derive some very general results characterizing…
We solve the problem of one-dimensional Peg Solitaire. In particular, we show that the set of configurations that can be reduced to a single peg forms a regular language, and that a linear-time algorithm exists for reducing any…
By treating combinatorial games as dynamical systems, we are able to address a longstanding open question in combinatorial game theory, namely, how the introduction of a "pass" move into a game affects its behavior. We consider two well…
The slow-coloring game is played by Lister and Painter on a graph $G$. On each round, Lister marks a nonempty subset $M$ of the uncolored vertices, scoring $|M|$ points. Painter then gives a color to a subset of $M$ that is independent in…
We examine a type of modified Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for strategising in combinatorial games. The modifications are derived by analysing simplified strategies and simplified versions of the underlying game and then using the results…
Let A be a finite subset of $\nat$. Then NIM(A;n) is the following 2-player game: initially there are $n$ stones on the board and the players alternate removing $a\in A$ stones. The first player who cannot move loses. This game has been…
In the recently introduced network patrolling game, an Attacker carries out an attack on a node of her choice, for a given number m of consecutive periods. The parameter m indicates the difficulty of the attack at a given node. To thwart…
N players are randomly fitted with a colored hat (q different colors). All players guess simultaneously the color of their own hat observing only the hat colors of the other N-1 players. The team wins if all players guess right. No…
Quantum game theory offers a lot of interesting questions, and it is relevant to use the quantum information theory to resolve or improve games with lack of information : how to use the power of quantum entanglement to show the superiority…
A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. One of the major approaches to analyzing games in combinatorial game theory is to break down a given game position into a disjunctive sum of multiple…
We study the unbiased WalkerMaker-WalkerBreaker games on the edge set of the complete graph on $n$ vertices, $K_n$, a variant of well-known Maker-Breaker positional games, where both players have the restriction on the way of playing.…