Related papers: Hats: all or nothing
We analyze the dynamics of competitions with a large number of players. In our model, n players compete against each other and the winner is decided based on the standings: in each competition, the mth ranked player wins. We solve for the…
We consider the following combinatorial two-player game: On the random tree arising from a branching process, each round one player (Breaker) deletes an edge and by that removes the descendant and all its progeny, while the other (Maker)…
The game of Hangman is a classical asymmetric two player game in which one player, the setter, chooses a secret word from a language, that the other player, the guesser, tries to discover through single letter matching queries, answered by…
The problem we are considering is the following. A colorblind player is given a set $B = \{b_1,b_2,...,b_N\}$ of $N$ colored balls. He knows that each ball is colored either red or green, and that there are less green balls (this will be…
For two graphs $B$ and $H$ the strong Ramsey game $\mathcal{R}(B,H)$ on the board $B$ and with target $H$ is played as follows. Two players alternately claim edges of $B$. The first player to build a copy of $H$ wins. If none of the players…
We combine the ideas of edge coloring games and asymmetric graph coloring games and define the \emph{$(m,1)$-edge coloring game}, which is alternatively played by two players Maker and Breaker on a finite simple graph $G$ with a set of…
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…
In this paper we introduce and study {\em all-pay bidding games}, a class of two player, zero-sum games on graphs. The game proceeds as follows. We place a token on some vertex in the graph and assign budgets to the two players. Each turn,…
We consider a model of language development, known as the naming game, in which agents invent, share and then select descriptive words for a single object, in such a way as to promote local consensus. When formulated on a finite and…
The Game of Poker Chips, Dominoes and Survival fosters team building and high level cooperation in large groups, and is a tool applied in management training exercises. Each player, initially given two colored poker chips, is allowed to…
The AB~Game is a game similar to the popular game Mastermind. We study a version of this game called Static Black-Peg AB~Game. It is played by two players, the codemaker and the codebreaker. The codemaker creates a so-called secret by…
We investigate zero-sum turn-based two-player stochastic games in which the objective of one player is to maximize the amount of rewards obtained during a play, while the other aims at minimizing it. We focus on games in which the minimizer…
Inspired by asynchronous cooperative Parrondo's games we introduce two new types of games in which all players simultaneously play game A or game B or a combination of these two games. These two types of games differ in the way a…
We provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first computational study of extensive-form adversarial team games. These games are sequential, zero-sum games in which a team of players, sharing the same utility function, faces an adversary.…
This paper considers a two-player game where each player chooses a resource from a finite collection of options. Each resource brings a random reward. Both players have statistical information regarding the rewards of each resource.…
Let $a$, $b$, and $n$ be integers with $0<a<b<n$. In a certain two-player probabilistic chip-collecting game, Alice tosses a coin to determine whether she collects $a$ chips or $b$ chips. If Alice collects $a$ chips, then Bob collects $b$…
The Strong Ramsey game $\mathcal{R}(B,G)$ is a two player game with players $P_1$ and $P_2$, where $B$ and $G$ are $k$-uniform hypergraphs for some $k \geq 2$. $G$ is always finite, while $B$ may be infinite. $P_1$ and $P_2$ alternately…
Team captains Alice and Bob divide up $2m$ footballers, each reduced to a real-valued score, into two teams of $m$ footballers each. On each turn, one captain plays picker, and the other chooser: the picker names a footballer yet to be…
A zero-one matrix $A$ contains another zero-one matrix $P$ if some submatrix of $A$ can be transformed to $P$ by changing some ones to zeros. $A$ avoids $P$ if $A$ does not contain $P$. The Pattern Avoidance Game is played by two players.…
Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe is a variant of the well known tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) board game. Two players compete to win three aligned "fields", each of them being a tic-tac-toe game. Each move determines which field the next player…