Related papers: Who Can Win a Single-Elimination Tournament?
A cornerstone of social choice theory is Condorcet's paradox which says that in an election where $n$ voters rank $m$ candidates it is possible that, no matter which candidate is declared the winner, a majority of voters would have…
We consider single-machine scheduling problems that are natural generalizations or variations of the min-sum set cover problem and the min-sum vertex cover problem. For each of these problems, we give new approximation algorithms. Some of…
With an exploding global market and the recent introduction of online cash prize tournaments, fantasy sports contests are quickly becoming a central part of the social gaming and sports industries. For sports fans and online media…
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…
The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then…
In this paper we study stochastic dynamic games with many players; these are a fundamental model for a wide range of economic applications. The standard solution concept for such games is Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE), but it is well…
The Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP) is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem that has attracted the interest of researchers around the world. This paper proposes an improved search neighbourhood for the TTP that has been…
The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then…
Who are the most significant players in the history of men tennis? Is the official ATP ranking system fair in evaluating players scores? Which players deserved the most contemplation looking at their match records? Which players have never…
We study the computational complexity of finding stable outcomes in hedonic games, which are a class of coalition formation games. We restrict our attention to symmetric additively-separable hedonic games, which are a nontrivial subclass of…
In this paper we review some of the main results obtained in the field of truels. A "truel" is a generalization of a duel involving three players. Depending on the rules used for chosing the players, we may distinguish between the random,…
We introduce a betting game, where the gambler aims to guess the last success epoch from past observed data. The player may bet on the event that no further successes occur, or choose a `trap' which is any span of future times. In the…
In some domestic professional sports leagues, the home stadiums are located in cities connected by a common train line running in one direction. For these instances, we can incorporate this geographical information to determine optimal or…
In this note, I introduce Estimated Performance Rating (PR$^e$), a novel system for evaluating player performance in sports and games. PR$^e$ addresses a key limitation of the Tournament Performance Rating (TPR) system, which is undefined…
We introduce the problem of ranking with slot constraints, which can be used to model a wide range of application problems -- from college admission with limited slots for different majors, to composing a stratified cohort of eligible…
According to recent empirical studies, the group draw of major sports tournaments can imply a high level of uncertainty, and some lucky teams enjoy an unfair advantage over the other teams. We propose a novel technique to quantify this draw…
Challenge the champ tournaments are one of the simplest forms of competition, where a (initially selected) champ is repeatedly challenged by other players. If a player beats the champ, then that player is considered the new (current) champ.…
We develop an abstract axiomatic theory of tie-breaking. A tie-breaking input consists of a finite set N of players, a weak order on N representing the standings to be refined, and an auxiliary information item drawn from a set on which the…
We present here two examples of stochastic modelings of social phenomena. The first topic is pedestrian counter flow. Two groups of model pedestrians move in opposite directions and create congestions. It will be shown that this congestion…
This paper discusses the gambling contest introduced in Seel & Strack (Gambling in contests, Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 375, Mar 2012.) and considers the impact of adding a penalty…