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Related papers: Variations on Narrow Dots-and-Boxes and Dots-and-T…

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A famous result in game theory known as Zermelo's theorem says that "in chess either White can force a win, or Black can force a win, or both sides can force at least a draw". The present paper extends this result to the class of all…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-10-25 Rabah Amir , Igor V. Evstigneev

We analyze the computational complexity of two 2-player games involving packing objects into a box. In the first game, players alternate drawing polycubes from a shared pile and placing them into an initially empty box in any available…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Oliver Korten

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,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-23 Andrew Flatz , Michael C. Loper , Lezlie Weyer

We provide answers to natural combinatorial questions which arise from learning the rules to Tak. We solve the discarded cases of the $3\times 3$ game not previously considered by Joshua Achiam, showing that Player $1$ has a forced win from…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2025-09-09 Joseph E. Marrow

We study the positional game where two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately select respectively $1$ and $b$ previously unclaimed edges of $K_n$. Maker wins if she succeeds in claiming all edges of some odd cycle in $K_n$ and Breaker wins…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-06-11 Jan Corsten , Adva Mond , Alexey Pokrovskiy , Christoph Spiegel , Tibor Szabó

Exactly 20 years ago at MFCS, Demaine posed the open problem whether the game of Dots & Boxes is PSPACE-complete. Dots & Boxes has been studied extensively, with for instance a chapter in Berlekamp et al. "Winning Ways for Your Mathematical…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2021-05-07 Kevin Buchin , Mart Hagedoorn , Irina Kostitsyna , Max van Mulken

We consider a game in which a blindfolded player attempts to set $n$ counters lying on the vertices of a rotating regular $n$-gon table simultaneously to $0$. When the counters count$\pmod{m}$ we simplify the argument of Bar Yehuda, Etzion,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-01 Samuel Korsky

We consider two conjectures made in regard to the graph grabbing game, played on a vertex weighted graph. Seacrest and Seacrest conjectured in 2012 that the first player can win the graph grabbing game on any even-order bipartite graph. Eoh…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-11-07 Lawrence Hollom

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-26 Yehonatan Fridman

We investigate the Dots and Boxes game, also known as ``Strings and Coins,'' for certain specific families of graphs. These include complete graphs, wheel graphs, and friendship graphs.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-18 Vedant Aryan , Alana Palmer , Alexander Skula , Matthew Woolbert , Joshua Zelinsky

In two-player games on graphs, the players move a token through a graph to produce an infinite path, which determines the winner of the game. Such games are central in formal methods since they model the interaction between a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Milad Aghajohari , Guy Avni , Thomas A. Henzinger

We consider multi-player graph games with partial-observation and parity objective. While the decision problem for three-player games with a coalition of the first and second players against the third player is undecidable, we present a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2014-04-23 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Laurent Doyen

We prove that, with high probability, in every $2$-edge-colouring of the random tournament on $n$ vertices there is a monochromatic copy of every oriented tree of order $O (n / \sqrt{\log n})$. This generalises a result of the first, third…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-06-03 Matija Bucic , Sven Heberle , Shoham Letzter , Benny Sudakov

In this paper we solve the three-player-game question. A three-player-game consists of a series of rounds. There are altogether three players. Two players participate in each round, at the end of the round the loser quits and the third…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-09-11 Fangqi Li

A fair coin is flipped $n$ times, and two finite sequences of heads and tails (words) $A$ and $B$ of the same length are given. Each time the word $A$ appears in the sequence of coin flips, Alice gets a point, and each time the word $B$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-01-06 Anne-Laure Basdevant , Olivier Hénard , Edouard Maurel-Segala , Arvind Singh

We introduce and study Minkowski games. These are two player games, where the players take turns to chose positions in $\mathbb{R}^d$ based on some rules. Variants include boundedness games, where one player wants to keep the positions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-11-28 Stéphane Le Roux , Arno Pauly , Jean-François Raskin

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We use this decomposition to construct a two-player game. Given a fixed integer $n$ and an initial decomposition of $n=n…

We analyze a game introduced by Andy Niedermaier, where $p$ players take turns throwing a dart at a dartboard. A player is eliminated unless his dart lands closer to the center than all previously thrown darts, in which case he goes to the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-09 Sergi Elizalde

Consider the following game played by two players, called Waiter and Client, on the edges of $K_n$ (where $n$ is divisible by $3$). Initially, all the edges are unclaimed. In each round, Waiter picks two yet unclaimed edges. Client then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-05-10 Vojtěch Dvořák

Two players alternate tossing a biased coin where the probability of getting heads is p. The current player is awarded alpha points for tails and alpha+beta for heads. The first player reaching n points wins. For a completely unfair coin…

Probability · Mathematics 2011-12-15 Robert W. Chen , Burton Rosenberg