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The guarding game is a game in which several cops try to guard a region in a (directed or undirected) graph against Robber. Robber and the cops are placed on the vertices of the graph; they take turns in moving to adjacent vertices (or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-11-15 R. Samal , T. Valla

The total isolation game is played on a graph $G$ by two players who take turns playing a vertex such that if $S$ is the set of already played vertices, then a vertex can be selected only if it is adjacent to a vertex that belongs to a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-08 Michael A. Henning , Douglas F. Rall

The total domination game is a two-person competitive optimization game, where the players, Dominator and Staller, alternately select vertices of an isolate-free graph $G$. Each vertex chosen must strictly increase the number of vertices…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-06-06 Csilla Bujtás

Players are arranged on a regular lattice and coded with a specific strategy for a pre-defined game. Each player sums their payoffs from playing the game with each of their neighbors, and then adopts the strategy of the most successful…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2015-08-03 Stewart D. Johnson

We define a two-player combinatorial game in which players take alternate turns; each turn consists on deleting a vertex of a graph, together with all the edges containing such vertex. If any vertex became isolated by a player's move then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-08-03 Richard Adams , Janae Dixon , Jennifer Elder , Jamie Peabody , Oscar Vega , Karen Willis

The semi-random graph process is a single-player game that begins with an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then adaptively selects a vertex…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-05 Natalie C. Behague , Trent G. Marbach , Pawel Pralat , Andrzej Rucinski

We introduce a one-person game that we call Padlock Solitaire which resembles the well-known clock solitaire card game. Analyzing variants of this game we obtain simple proofs of some classical results of combinatorics including ballot…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-09-01 Johan Wästlund

Sprout is a two-player pen and paper game which starts with $n$ vertices, and the players take turns to join two pre-existing dots by a subdivided edge while keeping the graph sub-cubic planar at all times. The first player not being able…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-11-07 Soura Sena Das , Zin Mar Myint , Soumen Nandi , Sagnik Sen , Éric Sopena

We introduce Shortest Connection Game, a two-player game played on a directed graph with edge costs. Given two designated vertices in which they start, the players take turns in choosing edges emanating from the vertex they are currently…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-11-26 Andreas Darmann , Ulrich Pferschy , Joachim Schauer

Pursuit-evasion games, such as the game of Revolutionaries and Spies, are a simplified model for network security. In the game we consider in this paper, a team of $r$ revolutionaries tries to hold an unguarded meeting consisting of $m$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-06-12 Dieter Mitsche , Pawel Pralat

The game of Cops and Robber is traditionally played on a finite graph. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyse the game that is played on an arbitrary geodesic space (a compact, path-connected space endowed with intrinsic…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Bojan Mohar

Independent set games are cooperative games defined on graphs, where players are edges and the value of a coalition is the maximum cardinality of independent sets in the subgraph defined by the coalition. In this paper, we investigate the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-09-14 Han Xiao , Yuanxi Wang , Qizhi Fang

Sprouts is a two-player pencil-and-paper game invented by John Conway and Michael Paterson in 1967. In the game, the players take turns in joining dots by curves according to simple rules, until one player cannot make a move. The game of…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2021-10-05 Tomáš Čížek , Martin Balko

Reachability games are two-player games played on a graph, where the objective of $\texttt{REACH}$ player is to reach the target set whereas the objective of $\texttt{SAFE}$ player is to stay away from the target set. Reachability games…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Ehsan Kafshdar Goharshady , Mehrdad Karrabi , Maximilian Seeliger , Đorđe Žikelić

We consider the problem of determining the minimum number of moves needed to solve a certain one-dimensional peg puzzle. Let N be a positive integer. The puzzle apparatus consists of a block with a single row of 2N+1 equally spaced holes…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 David M. Bradley , Hugh Thomas

We introduce a new two-player game on graphs, in which players alternate choosing vertices until the set of chosen vertices forms a dominating set. The last player to choose a vertex is the winner. The game fits into the scheme of several…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-31 Sean Fiscus , Glenn Hurlbert , Eric Myzelev , Travis Pence

The domatic number of a graph is the maximum number of pairwise disjoint dominating sets admitted by the graph. We introduce a game based around this graph invariant. The domatic number game is played on a graph $G$ by two players, Alice…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-15 Bert L. Hartnell , Douglas F. Rall

The domination game is played on a graph G. Vertices are chosen, one at a time, by two players Dominator and Staller. Each chosen vertex must enlarge the set of vertices of G dominated to that point in the game. Both players use an optimal…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-03-14 Bostjan Bresar , Sandi Klavzar , Douglas F. Rall

Maker-Breaker total domination game in graphs is introduced as a natural counterpart to the Maker-Breaker domination game recently studied by Duch\^ene, Gledel, Parreau, and Renault. Both games are instances of the combinatorial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-02-04 Valentin Gledel , Michael A. Henning , Vesna Iršič , Sandi Klavžar

A pebbling move refers to the act of removing two pebbles from one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. The goal of graph pebbling is: Given an initial distribution of pebbles, use pebbling moves to reach a specified goal…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-01-29 Garth Isaak , Matthew Prudente