Related papers: Combinatorial Aspects of the Card Game War

Using a notation of corner between edges when graph has a fixed rotation, i.e. cyclical order of edges around vertices, we define combinatorial objects - combinatorial maps as pairs of permutations, one for vertices and one for faces.…

We examine the advantages that quantum strategies afford in communication-limited games. Inspired by the card game blackjack, we focus on cooperative, two-party sequential games in which a single classical bit of communication is allowed…

We study a model of games that combines concurrency, imperfect information and stochastic aspects. Those are finite states games in which, at each round, the two players choose, simultaneously and independently, an action. Then a successor…

In simple card games, cards are dealt one at a time and the player guesses each card sequentially. We study problems where feedback (e.g. correct/incorrect) is given after each guess. For decks with repeated values (as in blackjack where…

We propose a new interpretation of the strange phenomena that some authors have observed about the Wald game. This interpretation is possible thanks to the new language of \emph{loadings} that Morrison and the author have introduced in a…

In 1901, Bouton proved that a winning strategy of the game of Nim is given by the bitwise XOR, called the nim-sum. But, why does such a weird binary operation work? Led by this question, this paper introduces a categorical reinterpretation…

Consider a card guessing game with complete feedback in which a deck of $n$ cards ordered $1,\dots, n$ is riffle-shuffled once. With the goal to maximize the number of correct guesses, a player guesses cards from the top of the deck one at…

Historically, games of all kinds have often been the subject of study in scientific works of Computer Science, including the field of machine learning. By using machine learning techniques and applying them to a game with defined rules or a…

In repeated games, players choose actions concurrently at each step. We consider a parameterized setting of repeated games in which the players form a population of an arbitrary size. Their utility functions encode a reachability objective.…

We study a game where one player selects a random function, and the other has to guess that function, and show that with high probability the second player can correctly guess most of the random function. We apply this analysis to…

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…

We study variations of classical combinatorial games on two finite heaps of tokens, a.k.a. \emph{subtraction games}. Given non-negative integers $p_1,q_1, p_2,q_2$, where $p_1q_2 > q_1p_2$, $p_1>0$ and $q_2>0$, two players alternate in…

Wythoff Nim aka Corner the Lady is a classic combinatorial game. A Queen is placed on an infinite chess board and two players take alternate turns, moving the Queen closer to the corner. The first player that corners the Queen wins. What…

Combinatorics, like computer science, often has to deal with large objects of unspecified (or unusable) structure. One powerful way to deal with such an arbitrary object is to decompose it into more usable components. In particular, it has…

Graph Pebbling is a well-studied single-player game on graphs. We introduce the game of Blocking Pebbles which adapts Graph Pebbling into a two-player strategy game in order to examine it within the context of Combinatorial Game Theory.…

We consider a card guessing strategy for a stack of cards with two different types of cards, say $m_1$ cards of type red (heart or diamond) and $m_2$ cards of type black (clubs or spades). Given a deck of $M=m_1+m_2$ cards, we propose a…

This paper investigates the popular card game UNO from the viewpoint of algorithmic combinatorial game theory. We define simple and concise mathematical models for the game, including both cooperative and uncooperative versions, and analyze…

Consider a randomly shuffled deck of $2n$ cards with $n$ red cards and $n$ black cards. We study the average number of moves it takes to go from a randomly shuffled deck to a deck that alternates in color by performing the following move:…

Card games are widely used to study sequential decision-making under uncertainty, with real-world analogues in negotiation, finance, and cybersecurity. These games typically fall into three categories based on the flow of control: strictly…

This brief paper describes the single-player card game called "Perpetual Motion" and reports on a computational analysis of the game's outcome. The analysis follows a Monte Carlo methodology based on a sample of 10,000 randomly generated…