Related papers: The Game of Cycles
We introduce a new abstract graph game, Swap Planarity, where the goal is to reach a state without edge intersections and a move consists of swapping the locations of two vertices connected by an edge. We analyze this puzzle game using…
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…
We prove that any algorithm for detecting cycles in an $m \times n$ grid graph, where cells are colored and adjacency is defined by matching colors, must read all $mn$ cells in the worst case for all grids with $m \geq 2$ and $n \geq 2$.…
The online semi-random graph process is a one-player game which starts with the empty graph on $n$ vertices. At every round, a player (called Builder) is presented with a vertex $v$ chosen uniformly at random and independently from previous…
Graph Pebbling is a well-studied single-player game on graphs. We introduce the game of Blocking Pebbles which adapts Graph Pebbling into a two-player strategy game in order to examine it within the context of Combinatorial Game Theory.…
Two players play a game by alternately splitting a surface of a compact $2$-manifold along a simple closed curve that is not null-homotopic and attaching disks to the resulting boundary; the last player who can move wins. Starting from an…
We initiate the study of simple games from the point of view of combinatorial topology. The starting premise is that the losing coalitions of a simple game can be identified with a simplicial complex. Various topological constructions and…
This is an expository paper. A $1$-cycle in a graph is a set $C$ of edges such that every vertex is contained in an even number of edges from $C$. E.g., a cycle in the sense of graph theory is a $1$-cycle, but not vice versa. It is easy to…
We introduce a natural variant of the parallel chip-firing game, called the diffusion game. Chips are initially assigned to vertices of a graph. At every step, all vertices simultaneously send one chip to each neighbour with fewer chips. As…
A team of $r$ {\it revolutionaries} and a team of $s$ {\it spies} play a game on a graph $G$. Initially, revolutionaries and then spies take positions at vertices. In each subsequent round, each revolutionary may move to an adjacent vertex…
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…
Coalition formation over graphs is a well studied class of games whose players are vertices and feasible coalitions must be connected subgraphs. In this setting, the existence and computation of equilibria, under various notions of…
In a strong game played on the edge set of a graph G there are two players, Red and Blue, alternating turns in claiming previously unclaimed edges of G (with Red playing first). The winner is the first one to claim all the edges of some…
We consider some biased Maker-Breaker games. Starting with the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices, at each turn Maker claims one edge, and then Breaker claims $b$ edges. Maker's goal is to obtain a set of edges having some…
We investigate a two player game called the $K^4$-building game: two players alternately claim edges of an infinite complete graph. Each player's aim is to claim all six edges on some vertex set of size four for themself. The first player…
We introduce and study pawn games, a class of two-player zero-sum turn-based graph games. A turn-based graph game proceeds by placing a token on an initial vertex, and whoever controls the vertex on which the token is located, chooses its…
Given a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, we consider the $\mathcal{F}$-saturation game. In this game two players alternate adding edges to an initially empty graph on $n$ vertices, with the only constraint being that neither player can add…
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…
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 hypergraph process is a natural generalisation of the semi-random graph process, which can be thought of as a one player game. For fixed $r < s$, starting with an empty hypergraph on $n$ vertices, in each round a set of $r$…