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In the game of $n-Sim$, two players take it in turn to claim unclaimed edges from a complete graph on $n$ vertices, with the first person to create a triangle in his own edges being the loser. We present some strategy-stealing arguments…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-01-29 Alexandru Malekshahian

We introduce CUT, the class of 2-player partition games. These are NIM type games, played on a finite number of heaps of beans. The rules are given by a set of positive integers, which specifies the number of allowed splits a player can…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Antoine Dailly , Eric Duchene , Urban Larsson , Gabrielle Paris

We investigate the Sprague-Grundy sequences for two normal-play impartial games based on arithmetic functions, first described by Iannucci and Larsson in \cite{sum}. In each game, the set of positions is N (natural numbers). In saliquant,…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Paul Ellis , Jason Shi , Thotsaporn Aek Thanatipanonda , Andrew Tu

The work we present in this paper initiated the formal study of fractional hedonic games, coalition formation games in which the utility of a player is the average value he ascribes to the members of his coalition. Among other settings,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-05-30 Haris Aziz , Florian Brandl , Felix Brandt , Paul Harrenstein , Martin Olsen , Dominik Peters

Berlekamp proposed a class of impartial combinatorial games based on the moves of chess pieces on rectangular boards. We generalize impartial chess games by playing them on Young diagrams and obtain results about winning and losing…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-01-27 Eric Gottlieb , Matjaž Krnc , Peter Muršič

In numerous positional games the identity of the winner is easily determined. In this case one of the more interesting questions is not {\em who} wins but rather {\em how fast} can one win. These type of problems were studied earlier for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2008-06-03 Dan Hefetz , Michael Krivelevich , Miloš Stojaković , Tibor Szabó

We provide a criterion for determining the winner in two-player win-lose alternating-move games on trees, in terms of the Hausdorff dimension of the target set. We focus our study on special cases, including the Gale-Stewart game on the…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2026-05-14 Itamar Bellaïche , Auriel Rosenzweig

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

In this paper, we analyze the mis\`ere versions of two impartial combinatorial games: k-Bounded Greedy Nim and Greedy Nim. We present a complete solution to both games by showing necessary and sufficient conditions for a position to be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Nanako Omiya , Ryo Yoshinaka , Ayumi Shinohara

We present and study a variant of the mean payoff games introduced by A. Ehrenfeucht and J. Mycielski. In this version, the second player makes an infinite sequence of moves only after the first player's sequence of moves has been decided…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Tom Meyerovitch , Aidan Young

We study games with finitely many participants, each having finitely many choices. We consider the following categories of participants: (I) populations: sets of nonatomic agents, (II) atomic splittable players, (III) atomic non splittable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-10-22 Sylvain Sorin , Cheng Wan

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

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-01-31 Pat Devlin , Paulina Trifonova

We consider three variants of a partisan combinatorial game between two players, Left and Right, played on an undirected simple graph. Left is able to delete vertices (and incident edges) while Right is able to delete edges. This natural…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-01-06 Nathan Shank , Devon Vukovich

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-11-13 William Gasarch , John Purtilo , Douglas Ulrich

We revisit games in partition function form, i.e. cooperative games where the payoff of a coalition depends on the partition of the entire set of players. We assume that each coalition computes its worth having probabilistic beliefs over…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Paraskevas V. Lekeas , Giorgos Stamatopoulos

In a Take-Away Game on hypergraphs, two players take turns to remove the vertices and the hyperedges of the hypergraphs. In each turn, a player must remove either a single vertex or a hyperedge. When a player chooses to remove one vertex,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-03-21 T. H. Molena

In a $(1:b)$ Maker-Breaker game, a primary question is to find the maximal value of $b$ that allows Maker to win the game (that is, the critical bias $b^*$). Erd\H{o}s conjectured that the critical bias for many Maker-Breaker games played…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-03-15 Michael Krivelevich , Gal Kronenberg

Given $n$ piles of tokens and a positive integer $k \leq n$, we study the following two impartial combinatorial games Nim$^1_{n, \leq k}$ and Nim$^1_{n, =k}$. In the first (resp. second) game, a player, by one move, chooses at least $1$ and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-08-25 Vladimir Gurvich , Nhan Bao Ho

We define a two-player combinatorial game in which players take alternate turns; each turn consists on deleting a vertex of a graph, together with all the edges containing such vertex. If any vertex became isolated by a player's move then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-08-03 Richard Adams , Janae Dixon , Jennifer Elder , Jamie Peabody , Oscar Vega , Karen Willis