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Let A be a finite subset of $\nat$. Then NIM(A;n) is the following 2-player game: initially there are $n$ stones on the board and the players alternate removing $a\in A$ stones. The first player who cannot move loses. This game has been…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-11-13 William Gasarch , John Purtilo , Douglas Ulrich

Combinatorial Game Theory typically studies sequential rulesets with perfect information where two players alternate moves. There are rulesets with {\em entailing moves} that break the alternating play axiom and/or restrict the other…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-04-04 Urban Larsson , Richard J. Nowakowski , Carlos P. Santos

The traditional mathematical model for an impartial combinatorial game is defined recursively as a set of the options of the game, where the options are games themselves. We propose a model called gamegraph, together with its generalization…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-05 Bojan Bašić , Paul Ellis , Dana C. Ernst , Danijela Popović , Nándor Sieben

AlphaZero-style reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have achieved superhuman performance in many complex board games such as Chess, Shogi, and Go. However, we showcase that these algorithms encounter significant and fundamental…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-22 Bei Zhou , Søren Riis

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Prem Kant , Urban Larsson , Ravi K. Rai , Akshay V. Upasany

We introduce Row Impartial Terminus (RIT), an impartial combinatorial game played on integer partitions. We show that any position in RIT can be uniquely decomposed into a core and a remnant. Our central result is that the Conway pair of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-04 Eric Gottlieb , Dawood Khatana , Matjaž Krnc , Peter Muršič , Ismael Qureshi

Given two finite sets of integers $S\subseteq\NNN\setminus\{0\}$ and $D\subseteq\NNN\setminus\{0,1\}$,the impartial combinatorial game $\IMARK(S,D)$ is played on a heap of tokens. From a heap of $n$ tokens, each player can moveeither to a…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-11-10 Eric Sopena

We investigate the Sprague-Grundy sequences for two normal-play impartial games based on arithmetic functions, first described by Iannucci and Larsson in \cite{sum}. In each game, the set of positions is N (natural numbers). In saliquant,…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Paul Ellis , Jason Shi , Thotsaporn Aek Thanatipanonda , Andrew Tu

We introduce the category of optiongraphs and option-preserving maps as a model to study impartial combinatorial games. Outcomes, remoteness, and extended nim-values are preserved under option-preserving maps. We show that the four…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-23 Mikhail Baltushkin , Dana C. Ernst , Nándor Sieben

We introduce a new two-player game on graphs, in which players alternate choosing vertices until the set of chosen vertices forms a dominating set. The last player to choose a vertex is the winner. The game fits into the scheme of several…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-31 Sean Fiscus , Glenn Hurlbert , Eric Myzelev , Travis Pence

We introduce CUT, the class of 2-player partition games. These are NIM type games, played on a finite number of heaps of beans. The rules are given by a set of positive integers, which specifies the number of allowed splits a player can…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Antoine Dailly , Eric Duchene , Urban Larsson , Gabrielle Paris

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

Impartial selection problems are concerned with the selection of one or more agents from a set based on mutual nominations from within the set. To avoid strategic nominations of the agents, the axiom of impartiality requires that the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-01 Javier Cembrano , Max Klimm , Arturo Merino

We study biased {\em orientation games}, in which the board is the complete graph $K_n$, and Maker and Breaker take turns in directing previously undirected edges of $K_n$. At the end of the game, the obtained graph is a tournament. Maker…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-07-12 Ido Ben-Eliezer , Michael Krivelevich , Benny Sudakov

The Grundy number of an impartial game G is the size of the unique Nim heap equal to G. We introduce a new variant of Nim, Restricted Nim, which restricts the number of stones a player may remove from a heap in terms of the size of the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Lionel Levine

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Kyle Burke , Matthew Ferland , Shanghua Teng

In this paper we analyze biased Maker-Breaker games and Avoider-Enforcer games, both played on the edge set of a random board $G\sim \gnp$. In Maker-Breaker games there are two players, denoted by Maker and Breaker. In each round, Maker…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-10-30 Asaf Ferber , Roman Glebov , Michael Krivelevich , Alon Naor

We present and study a variant of the mean payoff games introduced by A. Ehrenfeucht and J. Mycielski. In this version, the second player makes an infinite sequence of moves only after the first player's sequence of moves has been decided…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Tom Meyerovitch , Aidan Young

We consider the oriented graph whose vertices are isomorphism classes of finitely generated groups, with an edge from G to H if, for some generating set T in H and some sequence of generating sets S_i in G, the marked balls of radius i in…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2015-12-14 Laurent Bartholdi , Anna Erschler

Designing optimal interdependent networks is important for the robustness and efficiency of national critical infrastructures. Here, we establish a two-person game-theoretic model in which two network designers choose to maximize the global…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2016-02-26 Juntao Chen , Quanyan Zhu