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In this expository article, we discuss the rank-derangement problem, which asks for the number of permutations of a deck of cards such that each card is replaced by a card of a different rank. This combinatorial problem arises in computing…
This thesis will be discussing scoring play combinatorial games and looking at the general structure of these games under different operators. I will also be looking at the Sprague-Grundy values for scoring play impartial games, and…
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…
A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The main object of combinatorial game theory is to obtain the outcome, which player has a winning strategy, of a given combinatorial game. Positions of…
This paper introduces a variant of the impartial combinatorial game nim, called tree nim, as well as a particular case of tree nim called tripod nim. A certain existence-uniqueness result and a periodicity result are proven about the…
Modern board games are a rich source of interesting and new challenges for combinatorial problems. The game Nmbr9 is a solitaire style puzzle game using polyominoes. The rules of the game are simple to explain, but modelling the game…
We show that, by using multiplicative weights in a game-theoretic thought experiment (and an important convexity result on the composition of multiplicative weights with the relative entropy function), a symmetric bimatrix game (that is, a…
Cooperative Parrondo's games on a regular two dimensional lattice are analyzed based on the computer simulations and on the discrete-time Markov chain model with exact transition probabilities. The paradox appears in the vicinity of the…
Mathematics has been used in the exploration and enumeration of juggling patterns. In the case when we catch and throw one ball at a time the number of possible juggling patterns is well-known. When we are allowed to catch and throw any…
Poset games have been the object of mathematical study for over a century, but little has been written on the computational complexity of determining important properties of these games. In this introduction we develop the fundamentals of…
We consider the class of "well-tempered" integer-valued scoring games, which have the property that the parity of the length of the game is independent of the line of play. We consider disjunctive sums of these games, and develop a theory…
Parity games are simple infinite games played on finite graphs with a winning condition that is expressive enough to capture nested least and greatest fixpoints. Through their tight relationship to the modal mu-calculus, they are used in…
In this article, we consider some simple combinatorial game and a winning strategy in this game. This game is then used to prove several known results about non-repetitive sequences and approximations with denominators from a lacunary…
This paper provides a polynomial-time algorithm for solving parity games that runs in $\mathcal{O}(n^{2}\cdot(n + m))$ time-ending a search that has taken decades. Unlike previous attractor-based algorithms, the presented algorithm only…
We study variations on combinatorial games in which, instead of alternating moves, the players bid with discrete bidding chips for the right to determine who moves next. We consider both symmetric and partisan games, and explore differences…
In this methodological article on experimental-yet-rigorous enumerative combinatorics, we use two instructive case studies, to show that often, just like Alexander the Great before us, the simple, "cheating" solution to a hard problem is…
We solve the problem of one-dimensional Peg Solitaire. In particular, we show that the set of configurations that can be reduced to a single peg forms a regular language, and that a linear-time algorithm exists for reducing any…
Cooperative games are an important class of problems in game theory, where the goal is to distribute a value among a set of players who are allowed to cooperate by forming coalitions. An outcome of the game is given by an allocation vector…
The traditional mathematical model for an impartial combinatorial game is defined recursively as a set of the options of the game, where the options are games themselves. We propose a model called gamegraph, together with its generalization…
A combinatorial simplex algorithm is an instance of the simplex method in which the pivoting depends on combinatorial data only. We show that any algorithm of this kind admits a tropical analogue which can be used to solve mean payoff…