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Sprouts is a two-player topological game, invented in 1967 in the University of Cambridge by John Conway and Michael Paterson. The game starts with p spots, and ends in at most 3p-1 moves. The first player who cannot play loses. The…
This paper addresses several significant gaps in the theory of restricted mis\`ere play (Plambeck, Siegel 2008), primarily in the well-studied universe of dead-ending games, $\mathcal{E}$ (Milley, Renault 2013); if a player run out of moves…
Changes in payoffs can transform Prisoner's Dilemma and other social dilemmas into harmonious win-win games. Using the Robinson-Goforth topology of 2x2 games, this paper analyzes how payoff swaps turn Prisoner's Dilemma into other games,…
We study variations of classical combinatorial games on two finite heaps of tokens, a.k.a. \emph{subtraction games}. Given non-negative integers $p_1,q_1, p_2,q_2$, where $p_1q_2 > q_1p_2$, $p_1>0$ and $q_2>0$, two players alternate in…
The Robinson-Goforth topology of swaps in adjoining payoffs elegantly arranges 2x2 ordinal games in accordance with important properties including symmetry, number of dominant strategies and Nash Equilibria, and alignment of interests.…
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,…
A class of discrete Bidding Combinatorial Games that generalize alternating normal play was introduced by Kant, Larsson, Rai, and Upasany (2022). The major questions concerning optimal outcomes were resolved. By generalizing standard game…
We generalize the results and conjectures of Tam\'{a}s Lengyel, showing that the \textsc{nim}-values of a large class of two-dimensional subtraction-transfer games are periodic. These are impartial, normal-play games with two piles of…
Sprout is a two-player pen and paper game which starts with $n$ vertices, and the players take turns to join two pre-existing dots by a subdivided edge while keeping the graph sub-cubic planar at all times. The first player not being able…
We study zero-sum (combinatorial) games, within the framework of so-called Richman auctions (Lazarus et al. 1996) namely, we modify the alternating play scoring ruleset Cumulative Subtraction (CS) (Cohensius et al. 2019), to a discrete…
Let game B be Toral's cooperative Parrondo game with (one-dimensional) spatial dependence, parameterized by N (3 or more) and p_0,p_1,p_2,p_3 in [0,1], and let game A be the special case p_0=p_1=p_2=p_3=1/2. Let mu_B (resp., mu_(1/2,1/2))…
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…
Toral introduced so-called cooperative Parrondo games, in which there are N players (3 or more) arranged in a circle. At each turn one player is randomly chosen to play. He plays either game A or game B, depending on the strategy. Game A…
Two players alternate moves in the following impartial combinatorial game: Given a finitely generated abelian group $A$, a move consists of picking some nonzero element $a \in A$. The game then continues with the quotient group $A/ \langle…
The theory of combinatorial game (like board games) and the theory of social games (where one looks for Nash equilibria) are normally considered as two separate theories. Here we shall see what comes out of combining the ideas. The central…
In many social dilemmas, individuals tend to generate a situation with low payoffs instead of a system optimum ("tragedy of the commons"). Is the routing of traffic a similar problem? In order to address this question, we present…
Turn-based discounted-sum games are two-player zero-sum games played on finite directed graphs. The vertices of the graph are partitioned between player 1 and player 2. Plays are infinite walks on the graph where the next vertex is decided…
We are interested in the convergence of the value of n-stage games as n goes to infinity and the existence of the uniform value in stochastic games with a general set of states and finite sets of actions where the transition is commutative.…
Energy games are a well-studied class of 2-player turn-based games on a finite graph where transitions are labeled with integer vectors which represent changes in a multidimensional resource (the energy). One player tries to keep the…
Game theory is the standard tool used to model strategic interactions in evolutionary biology and social science. Traditional game theory studies the equilibria of simple games. But is traditional game theory applicable if the game is…