Related papers: Best play in Dots and Boxes endgames
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 propose a definition of generalized Cops and Robbers games where there are two players, the Pursuer and the Evader, who each move via prescribed rules. If the Pursuer can ensure that the game enters into a fixed set of final positions,…
Each of two players, by turns, rolls a dice several times accumulating the successive scores until he decides to stop, or he rolls an ace. When stopping, the accumulated turn score is added to the player account and the dice is given to his…
We study the game of Dots-and-Boxes from a statistical point of view. The early game can be treated as a case of Random Sequential Adsorption, with a jamming transition that marks the beginning of the end-game. We derive set of differential…
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…
Strategy iteration is a technique frequently used for two-player games in order to determine the winner or compute payoffs, but to the best of our knowledge no general framework for strategy iteration has been considered. Inspired by…
In this work, we examine a generic class of simple distributed balls-into-bins algorithms. Exploiting the strong concentration bounds that apply to balls-into-bins games, we provide an iterative method to compute accurate estimates of the…
We consider the following simple game: We are given a table with ten slots indexed one to ten. In each of the ten rounds of the game, three dice are rolled and the numbers are added. We then put this number into any free slot. For each…
Combinatorial games lead to several interesting, clean problems in algorithms and complexity theory, many of which remain open. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the area to encourage further research. In particular, we…
Dou Shou Qi is a game in which two players control a number of pieces, each of them aiming to move one of their pieces onto a given square. We implemented an engine for analyzing the game. Moreover, we created a series of endgame tablebases…
In finite games mixed Nash equilibria always exist, but pure equilibria may fail to exist. To assess the relevance of this nonexistence, we consider games where the payoffs are drawn at random. In particular, we focus on games where a large…
In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…
Combinatorial games are two-player games of pure strategy where the players, usually called Left and Right, move alternately. In this paper, we introduce Cheating Robot games. These arise from simultaneous-play combinatorial games where one…
We consider infinite-state turn-based stochastic games of two players, Box and Diamond, who aim at maximizing and minimizing the expected total reward accumulated along a run, respectively. Since the total accumulated reward is unbounded,…
A checkers-like model game with a simplified set of rules is studied through extensive simulations of agents with different expertise and strategies. The introduction of complementary strategies, in a quite general way, provides a tool to…
Partially-ordered set games, also called poset games, are a class of two-player combinatorial games. The playing field consists of a set of elements, some of which are greater than other elements. Two players take turns removing an element…
We introduce a betting game, where the gambler aims to guess the last success epoch from past observed data. The player may bet on the event that no further successes occur, or choose a `trap' which is any span of future times. In the…
We give an algorithm for solving stochastic parity games with almost-sure winning conditions on {\it lossy channel systems}, under the constraint that both players are restricted to finite-memory strategies. First, we describe a general…
In a recently introduced coset guessing game, Alice plays against Bob and Charlie, aiming to meet a joint winning condition. Bob and Charlie can only communicate before the game starts to devise a joint strategy. The game we consider begins…
We consider two-player normal form games where each player has the same finite strategy set. The payoffs of each player are assumed to be i.i.d. random variables with a continuous distribution. We show that, with high probability, the…