Related papers: Hats: all or nothing

We consider games played on finite graphs, whose goal is to obtain a trace belonging to a given set of winning traces. We focus on those states from which Player 1 cannot force a win. We explore and compare several criteria for establishing…

We analyze a coin-based game with two players where, before starting the game, each player selects a string of length $n$ comprised of coin tosses. They alternate turns, choosing the outcome of a coin toss according to specific rules. As a…

We introduce a two-player game, in which each player extends a given sequence by picking a free element in a domain D of the real line. The aim of the players is to control the parity of the number of transpositions necessary to put the…

We study pure coordination games where in every outcome, all players have identical payoffs, 'win' or 'lose'. We identify and discuss a range of 'purely rational principles' guiding the reasoning of rational players in such games and…

Shortest-path games are two-player zero-sum games played on a graph equipped with integer weights. One player, that we call Min, wants to reach a target set of states while minimising the total weight, and the other one has an antagonistic…

Graph games of infinite length are a natural model for open reactive processes: one player represents the controller, trying to ensure a given specification, and the other represents a hostile environment. The evolution of the system…

In repeated games, players choose actions concurrently at each step. We consider a parameterized setting of repeated games in which the players form a population of an arbitrary size. Their utility functions encode a reachability objective.…

In a Maker-Breaker game on a graph $G$, Breaker and Maker alternately claim edges of $G$. Maker wins if, after all edges have been claimed, the graph induced by his edges has some desired property. We consider four Maker-Breaker games…

Let $n, k$ be positive integers. The $(k+1)$-star avoidance game on $K_n$ is played as follows. Two players take it in turn to claim a (previously unclaimed) edge of the complete graph on $n$ vertices. The first player to claim all edges of…

This work considers two-player zero-sum semi-Markov games with incomplete information on one side and perfect observation. At the beginning, the system selects a game type according to a given probability distribution and informs to Player…

We focus on the problem of finding an optimal strategy for a team of two players that faces an opponent in an imperfect-information zero-sum extensive-form game. Team members are not allowed to communicate during play but can coordinate…

We propose a two-agent game wherein a questioner must be able to conjure discerning questions between sentences, incorporate responses from an answerer, and keep track of a hypothesis state. The questioner must be able to understand the…

Game coloring is a well-studied two-player game in which each player properly colors one vertex of a graph at a time until all the vertices are colored. An `eternal' version of game coloring is introduced in this paper in which the vertices…

We introduce the game of Cat Herding, where an omnipresent herder slowly cuts down a graph until an evasive cat player has nowhere to go. The number of cuts made is the score of a game, and we study the score under optimal play. In this…

Suppose that two players take turns coloring the vertices of a given graph G with k colors. In each move the current player colors a vertex such that neighboring vertices get different colors. The first player wins this game if and only if…

In the distributional Twenty Questions game, Bob chooses a number $x$ from $1$ to $n$ according to a distribution $\mu$, and Alice (who knows $\mu$) attempts to identify $x$ using Yes/No questions, which Bob answers truthfully. Her goal is…

For a graph G, a monotone increasing graph property P and positive integer q, we define the Client-Waiter game to be a two-player game which runs as follows. In each turn Waiter is offering Client a subset of at least one and at most q+1…

Quantum entanglement is known to provide a strong advantage in many two-party distributed tasks. We investigate the question of how much entanglement is needed to reach optimal performance. For the first time we show that there exists a…

Consider a two-person zero-sum search game between a hider and a searcher. The hider hides among $n$ discrete locations, and the searcher successively visits individual locations until finding the hider. Known to both players, a search at…

We consider various probabilistic games with piles for one player or two players. In each round of the game, a player randomly chooses to add $a$ or $b$ chips to his pile under the condition that $a$ and $b$ are not necessarily positive. If…