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Many real-world voting systems consist of voters that occur in just two different types. Indeed, each voting system with a {\lq\lq}House{\rq\rq} and a {\lq\lq}Senat{\rq\rq} is of that type. Here we present structural characterizations and…
Trying to enumerate all of the walks in a 2D lattice is a fun combinatorial problem and there are numerous applications, from polymers to sports. Computers provide a wonderful tool for analyzing these walks; we provide a Maple package for…
We consider the problem of enumeration of planar maps and revisit its one-matrix model solution in the light of recent combinatorial techniques involving conjugated trees. We adapt and generalize these techniques so as to give an…
We recall a combinatorial derivation of the functions generating probability of winnings for each of many participants of the Penney's game and show a generalization of the Conway's formula to this case.
In this paper, we consider a game beginning with a multiset of elements from a group. On a move, two elements are replaced by their sum. This is a no strategy game, and can be modeled as a graded poset with the rank of a node equal to the…
Mancala is a generic name for a family of sowing games that are popular all over the world. There are many two-player mancala games in which a player may move again if their move ends in their own store. In this work, we study a simple…
We solve the classical "Game of Pure Strategy" using linear programming. We notice an intricate even-odd behavior in the results of our computations, that seems to encourage odd or maximal bids.
Parity games play an important role in model checking and synthesis. In their paper, Calude et al. have shown that these games can be solved in quasi-polynomial time. We show that their algorithm can be implemented efficiently: we use their…
Poker is in the family of imperfect information games unlike other games such as chess, connect four, etc which are perfect information game instead. While many perfect information games have been solved, no non-trivial imperfect…
The solitaire of independence is a groupoid action resembling the classical 15-puzzle, which gives information about independent sets of coordinates in a totally extremally permutive subshift. We study the solitaire with the triangle shape,…
We introduce the Maker-Breaker domination game, a two player game on a graph. At his turn, the first player, Dominator, select a vertex in order to dominate the graph while the other player, Staller, forbids a vertex to Dominator in order…
We develop a generic computational model that can be used effectively for establishing the existence of winning strategies for concrete finite combinatorial games. Our modelling is (equational) logic-based involving advanced techniques from…
In this note, we give an alternate proof of the multinomial theorem using a probabilistic approach. Although the multinomial theorem is basically a combinatorial result, our proof may be simpler for a student familiar with only basic…
Parity games are combinatorial representations of closed Boolean mu-terms. By adding to them draw positions, they have been organized by Arnold and one of the authors into a mu-calculus. As done by Berwanger et al. for the propositional…
We consider three variants of a partisan combinatorial game between two players, Left and Right, played on an undirected simple graph. Left is able to delete vertices (and incident edges) while Right is able to delete edges. This natural…
Ladder tournaments are widely used to rank individuals in real-world organizations and games. Their mathematical properties however are still poorly understood. We formalize the ranking rule generated by a ladder tournament, and we show…
Is litigation a serious search for truth or simply a game of skill or luck? Although the process of litigation has been modeled as a Prisoner's Dilemma, as a War of Attrition, as a Game of Chicken and even as a simple coin toss, no one has…
We examine short combinatorial games for three or more players under a new play convention in which a player who cannot move on their turn is the unique loser. We show that many theorems of impartial and partizan two-player games under…
Classical billiards constitute an important class of dynamical systems. They have not only been in used in mathematical disciplines such as ergodic theory, but their properties demonstrate fundamental physical phenomena that can be observed…
Parity games are games that are played on directed graphs whose vertices are labeled by natural numbers, called priorities. The players push a token along the edges of the digraph. The winner is determined by the parity of the greatest…