Related papers: The Card Guessing Game: A generating function appr…
The overhand shuffle is one of the ``real'' card shuffling methods in the sense that some people actually use it to mix a deck of cards. A mathematical model was constructed and analyzed by Pemantle [J. Theoret. Probab. 2 (1989) 37--49] who…
In the top to random shuffle, the first a cards are removed from a deck of n cards 12 \cdots n and then inserted back into the deck. This action can be studied by treating the top to random shuffle as an element B_a, which we define…
This study presents a rigorous mathematical approach to the optimization of round and betting policies in Blackjack, using Markov Decision Processes (MDP) and Expected Utility Theory. The analysis considers a direct confrontation between a…
$\textit{Magic: The Gathering}$ is a popular and famously complicated trading card game about magical combat. In this paper we show that optimal play in real-world $\textit{Magic}$ is at least as hard as the Halting Problem, solving a…
This research project investigates the application of several computer vision techniques for playing card detection and recognition in the context of the popular casino game, blackjack. The primary objective is to develop a robust system…
Consider a permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ as a deck of cards numbered from 1 to $n$ and laid out in a row, where $\sigma_j$ denotes the number of the card that is in the $j$-th position from the left.\rm\ We define two cyclic to random…
Enormous successes have been made by quantum algorithms during the last decade. In this paper, we combine the quantum game with the problem of data clustering, and then develop a quantum-game-based clustering algorithm, in which data points…
We study a game-theoretic variant of the maximum circulation problem. In a flow allocation game, we are given a directed flow network. Each node is a rational agent and can strategically allocate any incoming flow to the outgoing edges.…
We introduce a new virtual environment for simulating a card game known as "Big 2". This is a four-player game of imperfect information with a relatively complicated action space (being allowed to play 1,2,3,4 or 5 card combinations from an…
In multi-player card games such as Skat or Bridge, the early stages of the game, such as bidding, game selection, and initial card selection, are often more critical to the success of the play than refined middle- and end-game play. At the…
When all the elements of the multiset $\{1,1,2,2,3,3,\ldots,k,k\}$ are placed in the cells of a $2\times k$ rectangular array, in how many configurations are exactly $v$ of the pairs directly over top one another, and exactly $h$ directly…
In this expository article, we highlight the direct connection between card shuffling and the functions known as $P$-partitions that come from algebraic combinatorics. While many (but not all) of the results we discuss are known, we give a…
Drafting, i.e., the selection of a subset of items from a larger candidate set, is a key element of many games and related problems. It encompasses team formation in sports or e-sports, as well as deck selection in many modern card games.…
In each step of the overlapping cycles shuffle on $n$ cards, a fair coin is flipped which determines whether the $m$th card or the $n$th card is moved to the top of the deck. Angel, Peres, and Wilson showed the following interesting fact:…
Two-player complete-information game trees are perhaps the simplest possible setting for studying general-sum games and the computational problem of finding equilibria. These games admit a simple bottom-up algorithm for finding subgame…
This paper is about the following question: How many riffle shuffles mix a deck of card for games such as blackjack and bridge? An object that comes up in answering this question is the descent polynomial associated with pairs of decks,…
Game theory has been increasingly applied in settings where the game is not known outright, but has to be estimated by sampling. For example, meta-games that arise in multi-agent evaluation can only be accessed by running a succession of…
Tic Tac Toe is amongst the most well-known games. It has already been shown that it is a biased game, giving more chances to win for the first player leaving only a draw or a loss as possibilities for the opponent, assuming both the players…
Wordle is an online word puzzle game that gained viral popularity in January 2022. The goal is to guess a hidden five letter word. After each guess, the player gains information about whether the letters they guessed are present in the…
We consider the problem of guessing a random, finite-alphabet, secret $n$-vector, where the guesses are transmitted via a noisy channel. We provide a single-letter formula for the best achievable exponential growth rate of the $\rho$--th…