Related papers: On the Sprague-Grundy function of compound games

Given an integer partition of $n$, we consider the impartial combinatorial game LCTR in which moves consist of removing either the left column or top row of its Young diagram. We show that for both normal and mis\`ere play, the optimal…

We study operators that combine combinatorial games. This field was initiated by Sprague-Grundy (1930s), Milnor (1950s) and Berlekamp-Conway-Guy (1970-80s) via the now classical disjunctive sum operator on (abstract) games. The new class…

We play a variation of Nim on stacks of tokens. Take your favorite increasing sequence of positive integers and color the tokens according to the following rule. Each token on a level that corresponds to a number in the sequence is colored…

A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The disjunctive sum $G + H$ of games $G$ and $H$ is the game in which $G$ and $H$ are played in parallel, and a player makes a move on exactly one of…

Sprout is a two-player pen and paper game which starts with $n$ vertices, and the players take turns to join two pre-existing dots by a subdivided edge while keeping the graph sub-cubic planar at all times. The first player not being able…

We study a variant of 3-pile Nim in which a move consists of taking tokens from one pile and, instead of removing then, topping up on a smaller pile provided that the destination pile does not have more tokens then the source pile after the…

The preference graph is a combinatorial representation of the structure of a normal-form game. Its nodes are the strategy profiles, with an arc between profiles if they differ in the strategy of a single player, where the orientation…

We define a family of vertex colouring games played over a pair of graphs or digraphs $(G,H)$ by players $\forall$ and $\exists$. These games arise from work on a longstanding open problem in algebraic logic. It is conjectured that there is…

We develop a calculus based on graph enumeration for $S_n$-equivariant motivic invariants of graphically stratified moduli spaces. We apply our theory to the Deligne--Mumford moduli space $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{g, n}$ and to the space of…

We show that a cooperative game may be decomposed into a sum of component games, one for each player, using the combinatorial Hodge decomposition on a graph. This decomposition is shown to satisfy certain efficiency, null-player, symmetry,…

For a collection of papers in memory of Elwyn Berlekamp (1940-2019), John Conway (1937-2020), and Richard Guy (1916-2020). The Sprague-Grundy theory for finite games without cycles was extended to general finite games by Cedric Smith and by…

The geodetic closure of a set S of vertices of a graph is the set of all vertices in shortest paths between pairs of vertices of S. A set S of vertices in a graph is geodetic if its geodetic closure contains all the vertices of the graph.…

The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then…

Here, we present a variant of Nim with two piles. In the first pile, we have stones with a weight of 1, and in the second pile, we have stones with a weight of -2. Two Players take turns to take stones from one of the piles, and the total…

The authors introduce the impartial game of the generalized Ry\=u\=o Nim, a variant of the classical game of Wythoff Nim. In the latter game, two players take turns in moving a single queen on a large chessboard, attempting to be the first…

A classical theorem of Simonovits from the 1980s asserts that every graph $G$ satisfying ${e(G) \gg v(G)^{1+1/k}}$ must contain $\gtrsim \left(\frac{e(G)}{v(G)}\right)^{2k}$ copies of $C_{2k}$. Recently, Morris and Saxton established a…

By resorting to the vector space structure of finite games, skew-symmetric games (SSGs) are proposed and investigated as a natural subspace of finite games. First of all, for two player games, it is shown that the skew-symmetric games form…

Using coalgebraic methods, we extend Conway's theory of games to possibly non-terminating, i.e. non-wellfounded games (hypergames). We take the view that a play which goes on forever is a draw, and hence rather than focussing on winning…

We solve the stochastic generalized Nash equilibrium (SGNE) problem in merely monotone games with expected value cost functions. Specifically, we present the first distributed SGNE seeking algorithm for monotone games that requires one…

Estimating the discrepancy of the hypergraph of all arithmetic progressions in the set $[N]=\{1,2,\hdots,N\}$ was one of the famous open problems in combinatorial discrepancy theory for a long time. An extension of this classical hypergraph…