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We study variants of Sidorenko's conjecture in tournaments, where new phenomena arise that do not have clear analogues in the setting of undirected graphs. We first consider oriented graphs that are systematically under-represented in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-14 Jacob Fox , Zoe Himwich , Nitya Mani , Yunkun Zhou

Intransitive player dominance, where player A beats B, B beats C, but C beats A, is common in competitive tennis. Yet, there are few known attempts to incorporate it within forecasting methods. We address this problem with a graph neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Lawrence Clegg , John Cartlidge

Often, a given selection game studied in the literature has a known dual game. In dual games, a winning strategy for a player in either game may be used to create a winning strategy for the opponent in the dual. For example, the Rothberger…

General Topology · Mathematics 2018-10-01 Steven Clontz

Let $G=(V, E)$ be a graph where $V$ and $E$ are the vertex and edge sets, respectively. For two disjoint subsets $A$ and $B$ of $V$, we say $A$ \textit{dominates} $B$ if every vertex of $B$ is adjacent to at least one vertex of $A$ in $G$.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-28 Kamal Santra

The degree-restricted random process is a natural algorithmic model for generating graphs with degree sequence D_n=(d_1, \ldots, d_n): starting with an empty n-vertex graph, it sequentially adds new random edges so that the degree of each…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-13 Michael Molloy , Erlang Surya , Lutz Warnke

This recreational mathematics article shows that the game of Snakes and Ladders is intransitive: square 69 has a winning edge over 79, which in turn beats 73, which beats 69. Analysis of the game is a nice illustration of Markov chains,…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2022-01-19 Gregory B. Sorkin

We consider the manipulability of tournament rules for round-robin tournaments of $n$ competitors. Specifically, $n$ competitors are competing for a prize, and a tournament rule $r$ maps the result of all $\binom{n}{2}$ pairwise matches…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-01 Jon Schneider , Ariel Schvartzman , S. Matthew Weinberg

We show that if $D$ is a tournament of arbitrary size then $D$ has finite strong components after reversing a locally finite sequence of cycles. In turn, we prove that any tournament can be covered by two acyclic sets after reversing a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-08-09 Paul Ellis , Daniel T. Soukup

A transitive tournament is an acyclic orientation of a complete graph. We study decompositions and packings of the transitive tournament \(TT_n\) into connected two-arc motifs. The three motifs considered are chains, colliders, and forks,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Ajani De Vas Gunasekara

The numbers game is a one-player game played on a finite simple graph with certain "amplitudes" assigned to its edges and with an initial assignment of real numbers to its nodes. The moves of the game successively transform the numbers at…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2008-10-31 Robert G. Donnelly , Kimmo Eriksson

Given $a,b,c\in\mathbb N$, let $D_{a,b,c}$ be the tournament on $a+b+c$ vertices obtained by replacing the vertices of the directed triangle $C_3$ with transitive tournaments $TT_a$, $TT_b$, and $TT_c$, respectively. Keevash and Sudakov…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Ming Chen , Wenxu Lu , Yun Wang , Zhiwei Zhang

Consider the following probabilistic one-player game: The board is a graph with $n$ vertices, which initially contains no edges. In each step, a new edge is drawn uniformly at random from all non-edges and is presented to the player,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-11-20 Michael Belfrage , Torsten Mütze , Reto Spöhel

Consider a 4-player version of Matching Pennies where a team of three players competes against the Devil. Each player simultaneously says "Heads" or "Tails". The team wins if all four choices match; otherwise the Devil wins. If all team…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Léonard Brice , Thomas A. Henzinger , K. S. Thejaswini

Negative dependence in tournaments has received attention in the literature. The property of negative orthant dependence (NOD) was proved for different tournament models with a special proof for each model. For general round-robin…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Yuting Su , Zhenfeng Zou , Taizhong Hu

We say that a digraph $D$ is competitive if any pair of vertices has a common out-neighbor in $D$ and that a graph $G$ is competitively orientable if there exists a competitive orientation of $G$. The notion of competitive digraphs arose…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-12-13 Myungho Choi , Minki Kwak , Suh-Ryung Kim

Given a graph $G$, a set $S$ of vertices in $G$ is a general position set if no triple of vertices from $S$ lie on a common shortest path in $G$. The general position achievement/avoidance game is played on a graph $G$ by players A and B…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-09-14 Ullas Chandran S. V. , Sandi Klavzar , Neethu P. K. , Rudini Sampaio

Given a Poisson process on a bounded interval, its random geometric graph is the graph whose vertices are the points of the Poisson process and edges exist between two points if and only if their distance is less than a fixed given…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-08-31 Laurent Decreusefond , Eduardo Ferraz

Let ${\cal G}=(G,w)$ be a weighted simple finite connected graph, that is, let $G$ be a simple finite connected graph endowed with a function $w$ from the set of the edges of $G$ to the set of real numbers. For any subgraph $G'$ of $G$, we…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-12-18 Elena Rubei

Consider an n by n array of cards shuffled in the following manner. An element x of the array is chosen uniformly at random; Then with probability 1/2 the rectangle of cards above and to the left of x is rotated 180 degrees, and with…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Robin Pemantle

Balanced knockout tournaments are ubiquitous in sports competitions and are also used in decision-making and elections. The traditional computational question, that asks to compute a draw (optimal draw) that maximizes the winning…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-04-19 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Rasmus Ibsen-Jensen , Josef Tkadlec