Related papers: Backgammon is Hard
Exactly 20 years ago at MFCS, Demaine posed the open problem whether the game of Dots & Boxes is PSPACE-complete. Dots & Boxes has been studied extensively, with for instance a chapter in Berlekamp et al. "Winning Ways for Your Mathematical…
The existential k-pebble game characterizes the expressive power of the existential-positive k-variable fragment of first-order logic on finite structures. The winner of the existential k-pebble game on two given finite structures can be…
We consider a general class of round-robin tournament models of equally strong players. In these models, each of the $n$ players competes against every other player exactly once. For each match between two players, the outcome is a value…
We establish some general schemes relating the computational complexity of a video game to the presence of certain common elements or mechanics, such as destroyable paths, collectible items, doors opened by keys or activated by buttons or…
We analyze the computational complexity of Tetris clearing (determining whether the player can clear an initial board using a given sequence of pieces) and survival (determining whether the player can avoid losing before placing all the…
Recent advancements in algorithms for sequential decision-making under imperfect information have shown remarkable success in large games such as limit- and no-limit poker. These algorithms traditionally formalize the games using the…
This paper depicts algorithms for solving the decision Boolean Satisfiability Problem. An extreme problem is formulated to analyze the complexity of algorithms and the complexity for solving it. A novel and easy reformulation as a lottery…
We analyse the computational complexity of three problems in judgment aggregation: (1) computing a collective judgment from a profile of individual judgments (the winner determination problem); (2) deciding whether a given agent can…
For a family of multidimensional gambler models we provide formulas for the winning probabilities (in terms of parameters of the system) and for the distribution of game duration (in terms of eigenvalues of underlying one-dimensional…
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…
In this paper, we introduce a graph coloring game called the Edge-Distinguishing Game (EDGe). The edge-distinguishing chromatic number of a graph is used to determine the moves each player can make. We determine which player has a winning…
We study a generalisation of B\"uchi-Landweber games to the timed setting. The winning condition is specified by a non-deterministic timed automaton with epsilon transitions and only Player I can elapse time. We show that for fixed number…
This paper provides a complexity analysis for the game of dark Chinese chess (a.k.a. "JieQi"), a variation of Chinese chess. Dark Chinese chess combines some of the most complicated aspects of board and card games, such as long-term…
We study a popular puzzle game known variously as Clickomania and Same Game. Basically, a rectangular grid of blocks is initially colored with some number of colors, and the player repeatedly removes a chosen connected monochromatic group…
Gambits are central to human decision-making. Our goal is to provide a theory of Gambits. A Gambit is a combination of psychological and technical factors designed to disrupt predictable play. Chess provides an environment to study gambits…
A knockout tournament is one of the most simple and popular forms of competition. Here, we are given a binary tournament tree where all leaves are labeled with seed position names. The players participating in the tournament are assigned to…
We study the sample complexity of identifying an approximate equilibrium for two-player zero-sum $n\times 2$ matrix games. That is, in a sequence of repeated game plays, how many rounds must the two players play before reaching an…
We show that the Minesweeper game is PP-hard, when the object is to locate all mines with the highest probability. When the probability of locating all mines may be infinitesimal, the Minesweeper game is even PSPACE-complete. In our…
We introduce the game of Cops and Eternal Robbers played on graphs, where there are infinitely many robbers that appear sequentially over distinct plays of the game. A positive integer $t$ is fixed, and the cops are required to capture the…
We consider random-turn positional games, introduced by Peres, Schramm, Sheffield and Wilson in 2007. A $p$-random-turn positional game is a two-player game, played the same as an ordinary positional game, except that instead of alternating…