Related papers: On the combinatorial value of Hex positions
The class of passable games was recently introduced by Selinger as a class of combinatorial games that are suitable for modelling monotone set coloring games such as Hex. In a monotone set coloring game, the players alternately color the…
Combinatorial Scoring games, with the property `extra pass moves for a player does no harm', are characterized. The characterization involves an order embedding of Conway's Normal-play games. Also, we give a theorem for comparing games with…
A notion of combinatorial game over a partially ordered set of atomic outcomes was recently introduced by Selinger. These games are appropriate for describing the value of positions in Hex and other monotone set coloring games. It is…
Combinatorial Game Theory is a branch of mathematics and theoretical computer science that studies sequential 2-player games with perfect information. Normal play is the convention where a player who cannot move loses. Here, we generalize…
Rex, short for Reverse Hex, is a set coloring game in which players try to avoid connecting terminals of their color. Combinatorial game theory (CGT) is the study of perfect strategy games. Until recently, both Rex and Hex were not examined…
We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…
In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…
Game theory is the standard tool used to model strategic interactions in evolutionary biology and social science. Traditional game theory studies the equilibria of simple games. But is traditional game theory applicable if the game is…
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…
In this note we discuss a theory of combinatorial games that involve transmitting the moves through a noisy channel that can introduce errors during the transmission. Players are aware of this interference and incorporate this variable into…
In this paper, we will be proving mathematically that scoring play combinatorial game theory covers all combinatorial games. That is, there is a sub-set of scoring play games that are identical to the set of normal play games, and a…
By treating combinatorial games as dynamical systems, we are able to address a longstanding open question in combinatorial game theory, namely, how the introduction of a "pass" move into a game affects its behavior. We consider two well…
We begin by reviewing and proving the basic facts of combinatorial game theory. We then consider scoring games (also known as Milnor games or positional games), focusing on the "fixed-length" games for which all sequences of play terminate…
Positional games are a branch of combinatorics, researching a variety of two-player games, ranging from popular recreational games such as Tic-Tac-Toe and Hex, to purely abstract games played on graphs and hypergraphs. It is closely…
We consider two-player combinatorial games in which the graph of positions is random and perhaps infinite, focusing on directed Galton-Watson trees. As the offspring distribution is varied, a game can undergo a phase transition, in which…
Evolutionary game theory is a common framework to study the evolution of cooperation, where it is usually assumed that the same game is played in all interactions. Here, we investigate a model where the game that is played by two…
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…
We study so-called invariant games played with a fixed number $d$ of heaps of matches. A game is described by a finite list $\mathcal{M}$ of integer vectors of length $d$ specifying the legal moves. A move consists in changing the current…
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…
We explore a version of the minimax theorem for two-person win-lose games with infinitely many pure strategies. In the countable case, we give a combinatorial condition on the game which implies the minimax property. In the general case, we…