English
Related papers

Related papers: The star avoidance game

200 papers

We consider the following combinatorial game: two players, Fast and Slow, claim $k$-element subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,...,n\}$ alternately, one at each turn, such that both players are allowed to pick sets that intersect all previously claimed…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-01-07 Balazs Patkos , Mate Vizer

A large class of Positional Games are defined on the complete graph on $n$ vertices. The players, Maker and Breaker, take the edges of the graph in turns, and Maker wins iff his subgraph has a given -- usually monotone -- property. Here we…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-05-24 József Balogh , Ryan R. Martin , András Pluhár

We define a two-player combinatorial game in which players take alternate turns; each turn consists on deleting a vertex of a graph, together with all the edges containing such vertex. If any vertex became isolated by a player's move then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-08-03 Richard Adams , Janae Dixon , Jennifer Elder , Jamie Peabody , Oscar Vega , Karen Willis

We consider a simple game, the $k$-regular graph game, in which players take turns adding edges to an initially empty graph subject to the constraint that the degrees of vertices cannot exceed $k$. We show a sharp topological threshold for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-01-23 Alan Frieze , Wesley Pegden

The $[X,Y]$-edge colouring game is played with a set of $k$ colours on a graph $G$ with initially uncoloured edges by two players, Alice (A) and Bob (B). The players move alternately. Player $X\in\{A,B\}$ has the first move.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-09-11 Stephan Dominique Andres , Wai Lam Fong

The domination game is played on a graph G. Vertices are chosen, one at a time, by two players Dominator and Staller. Each chosen vertex must enlarge the set of vertices of G dominated to that point in the game. Both players use an optimal…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-03-14 Bostjan Bresar , Sandi Klavzar , Douglas F. Rall

Waiter-Client and Client-Waiter games are two-player, perfect information games, with no chance moves, played on a finite set (board) with special subsets known as the winning sets. Each round of the biased $(1:q)$ game begins with Waiter…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-07-11 Wei En Tan

Positional games are a well-studied class of combinatorial game. In their usual form, two players take turns to play moves in a set (`the board'), and certain subsets are designated as `winning': the first person to occupy such a set wins…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-07-12 J. Robert Johnson , Imre Leader , Mark Walters

For two graphs $B$ and $H$ the strong Ramsey game $\mathcal{R}(B,H)$ on the board $B$ and with target $H$ is played as follows. Two players alternately claim edges of $B$. The first player to build a copy of $H$ wins. If none of the players…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-03-11 Stefan David , Ivailo Hartarsky , Marius Tiba

In this short note we consider a variation of the connectivity Waiter-Client game $WC(n,q,\mathcal{A})$ played on an $n$-vertex graph $G$ which consists of $q+1$ disjoint spanning trees. In this game in each round Waiter offers Client $q+1$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-10-21 Sylwia Antoniuk , Codruut Grosu , Lothar Narins

In chomp on graphs, two players alternatingly pick an edge or a vertex from a graph. The player that cannot move any more loses. The questions one wants to answer for a given graph are: Which player has a winning strategy? Can a explicit…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-04-19 Ignacio García-Marco , Kolja Knauer , Luis Pedro Montejano

We analyze a two-player game in which players take turns avoiding the selection of certain points within a convex geometry. The objective is to prevent the convex closure of all chosen points from encompassing a predefined set. The first…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Seomgeun Shim

We study the m-Eternal Domination problem, which is the following two-player game between a defender and an attacker on a graph: initially, the defender positions k guards on vertices of the graph; the game then proceeds in turns between…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Tiziana Calamoneri , Federico Corò , Neeldhara Misra , Saraswati G. Nanoti , Giacomo Paesani

We consider a two-player game in which the first player (the Guesser) tries to guess, edge-by-edge, the path that second player (the Chooser) takes through a directed graph. At each step, the Guesser makes a wager as to the correctness of…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-07-14 Marcus Pendergrass

Two players take turns claiming empty cells from an $n\times n$ grid. The first player (if any) to occupy a transversal (a set of $ n $ cells having no two cells in the same row or column) is the winner. What is the outcome of the game…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-07-08 Žarko Ranđelović

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers; a similar result, though with a different notion of a legal decomposition, holds for many other sequences. We use these…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2018-09-17 Paul Baird-Smith , Alyssa Epstein , Kristen Flint , Steven J. Miller

The usual $n$-in-a-row game is a positional game in which two player alternately claim points in $\bb{Z}^2$ with the winner being the first player to claim $n$ consecutive points in a line. We consider a variant of the game, suggested by…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-09-25 Joshua Erde

The strong Ramsey game $R(\mathcal{B}, H)$ is a two-player game played on a graph $\mathcal{B}$, referred to as the board, with a target graph $H$. In this game, two players, $P_1$ and $P_2$, alternately claim unclaimed edges of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-01-28 Jiangdong Ai , Jun Gao , Zixiang Xu , Xin Yan

A partially parallel dynamical noisy binary choice (Ising) game in discrete time of $N$ players on complete graphs with $k$ players having a possibility of changing their strategies at each time moment called $k$-flip Ising game is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Kovalenko Aleksandr , Andrey Leonidov

We study the unbiased WalkerMaker-WalkerBreaker games on the edge set of the complete graph on $n$ vertices, $K_n$, a variant of well-known Maker-Breaker positional games, where both players have the restriction on the way of playing.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-06-13 Jovana Forcan , Mirjana Mikalački