Related papers: On Aperiodic Subtraction Games with Bounded Nim Se…

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…

We define the class of "simple recursive games". A simple recursive game is defined as a simple stochastic game (a notion due to Anne Condon), except that we allow arbitrary real payoffs but disallow moves of chance. We study the complexity…

We prove a recent conjecture of Duch\^ene and Rigo, stating that every complementary pair of homogeneous Beatty sequences represents the solution to an \emph{invariant} impartial game. Here invariance means that each available move in a…

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…

The deduction game is a variation of the game of cops and robber on graphs in which searchers must capture an invisible evader in at most one move. Searchers know each others' initial locations, but can only communicate if they are on the…

The traditional mathematical model for an impartial combinatorial game is defined recursively as a set of the options of the game, where the options are games themselves. We propose a model called gamegraph, together with its generalization…

For a collection of papers in memory of Elwyn Berlekamp (1940-2019), John Conway (1937-2020), and Richard Guy (1916-2020). The Sprague-Grundy theory for finite games without cycles was extended to general finite games by Cedric Smith and by…

This article concerns the resolution of impartial combinatorial games, and in particular games that can be split in sums of independent positions. We prove that in order to compute the outcome of a sum of independent positions, it is always…

The numbers game is a one-player game played on a finite simple graph with certain "amplitudes" assigned to its edges and with an initial assignment of real numbers to its nodes. The moves of the game successively transform the numbers at…

We encode arbitrary finite impartial combinatorial games in terms of lattice points in rational convex polyhedra. Encodings provided by these \emph{lattice games} can be made particularly efficient for octal games, which we generalize to…

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…

We introduce the notion of invariant vectors of a game and develop the Invariance Reduction Process, which first uses reduction of positions via invariance and then zero and merge reductions of games to arrive at smaller, solved sub-games…

In this paper, we study nonzero-sum separable games, which are continuous games whose payoffs take a sum-of-products form. Included in this subclass are all finite games and polynomial games. We investigate the structure of equilibria in…

Number games play a central role in alternating normal play combinatorial game theory due to their real-number-like properties (Conway 1976). Here we undertake a critical re-examination: we begin with integer and dyadic games and identify…

In this paper, we address a natural question at the intersection of combinatorial game theory and computational complexity: "Can a sum of simple tepid games in canonical form be intractable?" To resolve this fundamental question, we…

We consider an {\em enforce operator} on impartial rulesets similar to the Muller Twist and the comply/constrain operator of Smith and St\u anic\u a, 2002. Applied to the rulesets A and B, on each turn the opponent enforces one of the…

We study 2-player impartial games, so called \emph{invariant subtraction games}, of the type, given a set of allowed moves the players take turn in moving one single piece on a large Chess board towards the position $\boldsymbol 0$. Here,…

We study algorithmic complexity of solving subtraction games in a~fixed dimension with a finite difference set. We prove that there exists a game in this class such that any algorithm solving the game runs in exponential time. Also we prove…

The preference graph is a combinatorial representation of the structure of a normal-form game. Its nodes are the strategy profiles, with an arc between profiles if they differ in the strategy of a single player, where the orientation…

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.…