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Subtraction games are a classical topic in Combinatorial Game Theory. A result of Golomb~(1966) shows that every subtraction game with a finite move set has an eventually periodic nim-sequence, but the known proof yields only an exponential…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-18 Anjali Bhagat , Urban Larsson , Hikaru Manabe , Takahiro Yamashita

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

This article deals with certain star variants of the Scheepers property. We introduce and study the star-$K$-Scheepers property and corresponding game. The relationships between the game corresponding to the star-$K$-Scheepers property and…

General Topology · Mathematics 2023-05-09 Debraj Chandra , Nur Alam

In 2010, Bre\v{s}ar, Klav\v{z}ar and Rall introduced the optimization variant of the graph domination game and the game domination number, which was proved PSPACE-hard by Bre\v{s}ar et al. in 2016. In 2024, Leo Versteegen obtained the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-13 João Marcos Brito , Thiago Marcilon , Nicolas Martins , Rudini Sampaio

In this paper we will be examining impartial scoring play games. We first give the basic definitions for what impartial scoring play games are and look at their general structure under the disjunctive sum. We will then examine the game of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-08-07 Fraser Stewart

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

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,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-09-23 Urban Larsson

We present a general way of defining various reduction games on \omega\ which "represent" corresponding topologically defined classes of functions. In particular, we will show how to construct games for piecewise defined functions, for…

Logic · Mathematics 2011-12-01 Luca Motto Ros

We introduce a misere quotient semigroup construction in impartial combinatorial game theory, and argue that it is the long-sought natural generalization of the normal-play Sprague-Grundy theory to misere play. Along the way, we illustrate…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Thane E. Plambeck

Absolute combinatorial game theory was recently developed as a unifying tool for constructive/local game comparison (Larsson et al. 2018). The theory concerns {\em parental universes} of combinatorial games; standard closure properties are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-10 U. Larsson , R. J. Nowakowski , C. P. Santos

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

The technique of $\star$-translation is important in arguments calibrating the strengths of determinacy theories against large cardinals, for example in [9] and [1] in the paper's bibliography. It has also been used in analysing the…

Logic · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Farmer Schlutzenberg

Combinatorial games are played under two different play conventions: normal play, where the last player to move wins, and \mis play, where the last player to move loses. Combinatorial games are also classified into impartial positions and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-08-25 Meghan Rose Allen

We continue to explore the ways in which high-level topological connections arise from connections between fundamental features of the spaces, in this case focusing on star-selection principles in Pixley-Roy hyperspaces and uniform spaces.…

General Topology · Mathematics 2024-03-26 Christopher Caruvana , Jared Holshouser

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

Absolute Universes of combinatorial games, as defined in a recent paper by the same authors, include many standard short normal- mis\`ere- and scoring-play monoids. In this note we show that the class is categorical, by extending Joyal's…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-09-12 Urban Larsson , Richard J. Nowakowski , Carlos P. Santos

Partial order reductions have been successfully applied to model checking of concurrent systems and practical applications of the technique show nontrivial reduction in the size of the explored state space. We present a theory of partial…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-06-22 Frederik Meyer Bønneland , Peter Gjøl Jensen , Kim Guldstrand Larsen , Marco Muñiz , Jiří Srba

A distortion function, which captures the payoff gap between a player's actual payoff and her true payoff, is introduced and used to analyze games. In our proposed framework, we argue that players' actual payoff functions should be used to…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-06-23 Fang-Fang Tang , Yongsheng Xu

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-08-25 Alan Guo , Ezra Miller

We consider multiplayer stochastic games in which the payoff of each player is a bounded and Borel-measurable function of the infinite play. By using a generalization of the technique of Martin (1998) and Maitra and Sudderth (1998), we show…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-26 János Flesch , Eilon Solan