English
Related papers

Related papers: On the Structure of Mis\`ere Impartial Games

200 papers

Two players alternate moves in the following impartial combinatorial game: Given a finitely generated abelian group $A$, a move consists of picking some nonzero element $a \in A$. The game then continues with the quotient group $A/ \langle…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-01-29 Martin Brandenburg

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Kyle Burke , Matthew Ferland , Shanghua Teng

In this paper, we analyze the mis\`ere versions of two impartial combinatorial games: k-Bounded Greedy Nim and Greedy Nim. We present a complete solution to both games by showing necessary and sufficient conditions for a position to be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Nanako Omiya , Ryo Yoshinaka , Ayumi Shinohara

Conway's Game of Life is a two-dimensional cellular automaton. As a dynamical system, it is well-known to be computationally universal, i.e.\ capable of simulating an arbitrary Turing machine. We show that in a sense taking a single…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Ville Salo , Ilkka Törmä

A temporal-theoretic formalism for understanding game theory is described where a strict ordering relation on a set of time points $T$ defines a game on $T$. Using this formalism, a proof of Zermelo's Theorem, which states that every finite…

Logic · Mathematics 2013-05-02 Samuel Reid

We study the abstract Banach-Mazur game played with finitely generated structures instead of open sets. We characterize the existence of winning strategies aiming at a single countably generated structure. We also introduce the concept of…

Logic · Mathematics 2021-08-25 Adam Krawczyk , Wiesław Kubiś

We show that partizan games admit canonical forms in mis\`ere play. The proof is a synthesis of the canonical form theorems for normal-play partizan games and mis\`ere-play impartial games. It is fully constructive, and algorithms readily…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Aaron N. Siegel

Following the work of Lloyd Shapley on the Shapley value, and tangentially the work of Guillermo Owen, we offer an alternative non-probabilistic formulation of part of the work of Robert J. Weber in his 1978 paper "Probabilistic values for…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2019-05-13 Jacob North Clark , Stephen Montgomery-Smith

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-05 Mark Spindler

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-05 Bojan Bašić , Paul Ellis , Dana C. Ernst , Danijela Popović , Nándor Sieben

Classify simple games into sixteen "types" in terms of the four conventional axioms: monotonicity, properness, strongness, and nonweakness. Further classify them into sixty-four classes in terms of finiteness (existence of a finite carrier)…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-07-05 Masahiro Kumabe , H. Reiju Mihara

This short note establishes positionality of mean-payoff games over infinite game graphs by constructing a well-founded monotone universal graph.

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-05-02 Pierre Ohlmann

We study two-player games played on the infinite graph of sentential forms induced by a context-free grammar (that comes with an ownership partitioning of the non-terminals). The winning condition is inclusion of the derived terminal word…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2016-11-02 Lukáš Holík , Roland Meyer , Sebastian Muskalla

We study 2-player impartial games of the form take-away which produce P-positions (second player winning positions) corresponding to complementary Beatty sequences, given by the continued fractions (1;k,1,k,1,...) and (k+1;k,1,k,1,...). Our…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-02-04 Urban Larsson , Mike Weimerskirch

We investigate the Sprague-Grundy sequences for two normal-play impartial games based on arithmetic functions, first described by Iannucci and Larsson in \cite{sum}. In each game, the set of positions is N (natural numbers). In saliquant,…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Paul Ellis , Jason Shi , Thotsaporn Aek Thanatipanonda , Andrew Tu

We prove the almost equivalence of the minimax theorem and the strong duality theorem for a large class of games and conic programs. The previous fundamental results on the equivalence of linear programming and two-player zero-sum games…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-14 Nikos Dimou

In Combinatorial Game Theory, short game forms are defined recursively over all the positions the two players are allowed to move to. A form is decomposable if it can be expressed as a disjunctive sum of two forms with smaller birthday. If…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-06-13 Michael Fisher , Neil A. McKay , Rebecca Milley , Richard J. Nowakowski , Carlos P. Santos

We introduce CUT, the class of 2-player partition games. These are NIM type games, played on a finite number of heaps of beans. The rules are given by a set of positive integers, which specifies the number of allowed splits a player can…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Antoine Dailly , Eric Duchene , Urban Larsson , Gabrielle Paris

We study the computational complexity of finding stable outcomes in hedonic games, which are a class of coalition formation games. We restrict our attention to symmetric additively-separable hedonic games, which are a nontrivial subclass of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-09-18 Martin Gairing , Rahul Savani

We apply the Sprague-Grundy Theorem to LCTR, a new impartial game on partitions in which players take turns removing either the Left Column or the Top Row of the corresponding Young diagram. We establish that the Sprague-Grundy value of any…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-08-16 Eric Gottlieb , Jelena Ilić , Matjaž Krnc