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Circular nim $CN(m, k)$ is a variant of nim, in which there are $m$ piles of tokens arranged in a circle and each player, in their turn, chooses at most $k$ consecutive piles in the circle and removes an arbitrary number of tokens from each…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-03 Koki Suetsugu

In an amalgamation Nim, players are allowed to use a move from the traditional form of Nim or to amalgamate two piles when they are not empty. No formula that describes the set of P-positions of Amalgamation Nim is known. The author gives a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-25 Hikaru Manabe

In 1901, Bouton proved that a winning strategy of the game of Nim is given by the bitwise XOR, called the nim-sum. But, why does such a weird binary operation work? Led by this question, this paper introduces a categorical reinterpretation…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Ryuya Hora

We study the applicability of quantum algorithms in computational game theory and generalize some results related to Subtraction games, which are sometimes referred to as one-heap Nim games. In quantum game theory, a subset of Subtraction…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-06-15 Dmitry Kravchenko , Kamil Khadiev , Danil Serov , Ruslan Kapralov

The authors present formulas for the previous player's winning positions of two variants of restricted Nim. In both of these two games, there is one pile of stones, and in the first variant, we investigate the case that in k-th turn, you…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-12-01 Keita Mizugaki , Shoei Takahashi , Hikaru Manabe , Aoi Murakami , Ryohei Miyadera

We compare to different extensions of the ancient game of nim: Moore's nim$(n, \leq k)$ and exact nim$(n, = k)$. Given integers $n$ and $k$ such that $0 < k \leq n$, we consider $n$ piles of stones. Two players alternate turns. By one move…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-12-01 Vladimir Gurvich , Artem Parfenov , Michael Vyalyi

The ordinary game of Nim has a long history and is well-known in the area of combinatorial game theory. The solution to the ordinary game of Nim has been known for many years and lends itself to numerous other solutions to combinatorial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-08-29 Lindsay Erickson , Warren Shreve

In this paper, we propose a Quantum variation of combinatorial games, generalizing the Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe proposed by Allan Goff. A combinatorial game is a two-player game with no chance and no hidden information, such as Go or Chess. In…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2018-03-06 Paul Dorbec , Mehdi Mhalla

Candy Nim is a variant of Nim in which both players aim to take the last candy in a game of Nim, with the added simultaneous secondary goal of taking as many candies as possible. We give bounds on the number of candies the first and second…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-05-21 Nitya Mani , Rajiv Nelakanti , Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo , Alex Tholen

We examine short combinatorial games for three or more players under a new play convention in which a player who cannot move on their turn is the unique loser. We show that many theorems of impartial and partizan two-player games under…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-05 Mark Spindler

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…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Greg Bodwin , Ofer Grossman

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-04-17 Rebecca E. Morrison , Eric J. Friedman , Adam S. Landsberg

Yama Nim is a two heaps Nim game introduced in the second author's Master Thesis, where the player takes more than $2$ tokens from one heap, and return $1$ token to the other heap. Triangular Nim is a generalization, where the player takes…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-10-11 Shun-ichi Kimura , Takahiro Yamashita

Here, we present a variant of Nim with two piles. In the first pile, we have stones with a weight of 1, and in the second pile, we have stones with a weight of -2. Two Players take turns to take stones from one of the piles, and the total…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-12-06 Shoei Takahashi , Hikaru Manabe , Aoi Murakami , Ryohei Miyadera

{\sc Yama Nim} is a variant of two piles {\sc Nim}. In this ruleset, the player chosses one of the piles and removes at least two tokens from the pile. In the same move, the player adds one token to the other pile. We show the winning…

Aim: Present a systematic development of part of the theory of combinatorial games from the ground up. Approach: Computational complexity. Combinatorial games are completely determined; the questions of interest are efficiencies of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-09-06 Aviezri S. Fraenkel

We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-04 Tim Rammenstein

The Tower of Hanoi game is a classical puzzle in recreational mathematics (Lucas 1883) which also has a strong record in pure mathematics. In a borderland between these two areas we find the characterization of the minimal number of moves,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-08-31 Jonathan Chappelon , Urban Larsson , Akihiro Matsuura

We propose a variant of Nim, named StrNim. Whereas a position in Nim is a tuple of non-negative integers, that in StrNim is a string, a sequence of characters. In every turn, each player shrinks the string, by removing a substring repeating…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Shota Mizuno , Ryo Yoshinaka , Ayumi Shinohara

Given $n$ piles of tokens and a positive integer $k \leq n$, the game Nim$^1_{n, =k}$ of exact slow $k$-Nim is played as follows. Two players move alternately. In each move, a player chooses exactly $k$ non-empty piles and removes one token…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-02-09 Nikolay Chikin , Vladimir Gurvich , Konstantin Knop , Mike Paterson , Michael Vyalyi