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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

A new surveillance-evasion differential game is posed and solved in which an agile pursuer (the prying pedestrian) seeks to remain within a given surveillance range of a less agile evader that aims to escape. In contrast to previous…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-13 Philipp Braun , Timothy L. Molloy , Iman Shames

Let $(X, \mathcal{F})$ be a hypergraph. The Maker-Breaker game on $(X, \mathcal{F})$ is a combinatorial game between two players, Maker and Breaker. Beginning with Maker, the players take turns claiming vertices from $X$ that have not yet…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Finn Orson Koepke

Numerous popular abstract strategy games ranging from Hex and Havannah to Lines of Action belong to the class of connection games. Still, very few complexity results on such games have been obtained since Hex was proved PSPACE-complete in…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2014-03-27 Edouard Bonnet , Florian Jamain , Abdallah Saffidine

We analyze a two-player game in which players take turns avoiding the selection of certain points within a convex geometry. The objective is to prevent the convex closure of all chosen points from encompassing a predefined set. The first…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Seomgeun Shim

We study the computational complexity of a perfect-information two-player game proposed by Aigner and Fromme. The game takes place on an undirected graph where n simultaneously moving cops attempt to capture a single robber, all moving at…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2012-12-19 Marcello Mamino

Arc-Kayles is a game where two players alternate removing two adjacent vertices until no move is left, the winner being the player who played the last move. Introduced in 1978, its computational complexity is still open. More recently,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-24 Kyle Burke , Antoine Dailly , Nacim Oijid

In 2010, Bre\v{s}ar, Klav\v{z}ar and Rall introduced the optimization variant of the graph domination game and the game domination number, which was proved PSPACE-hard by Bre\v{s}ar et al. in 2016. In 2024, Leo Versteegen obtained the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-13 João Marcos Brito , Thiago Marcilon , Nicolas Martins , Rudini Sampaio

We study algorithmic complexity of solving subtraction games in a~fixed dimension with a finite difference set. We prove that there exists a game in this class such that any algorithm solving the game runs in exponential time. Also we prove…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2020-01-14 Vladimir Gurvich , Michael Vyalyi

We study the parameterized complexity of several positional games. Our main result is that Short Generalized Hex is W[1]-complete parameterized by the number of moves. This solves an open problem from Downey and Fellows' influential list of…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-04-28 Édouard Bonnet , Serge Gaspers , Antonin Lambilliotte , Stefan Rümmele , Abdallah Saffidine

The study of SAT and its variants has provided numerous NP-complete problems, from which most NP-hardness results were derived. Due to the NP-hardness of SAT, adding constraints to either specify a more precise NP-complete problem or to…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-11-19 Nacim Oijid

We show that three placement games, Col, NoGo, and Fjords, are PSPACE-complete on planar graphs. The hardness of Col and Fjords is shown via a reduction from Bounded 2-Player Constraint Logic and NoGo is shown to be hard directly from Col.

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2016-02-22 Kyle Burke , Bob Hearn

A poset game is a two-player game played over a partially ordered set (poset) in which the players alternate choosing an element of the poset, removing it and all elements greater than it. The first player unable to select an element of the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Daniel Grier

We introduce achievement positional games, a convention for positional games which encompasses the Maker-Maker and Maker-Breaker conventions. We consider two hypergraphs, one red and one blue, on the same vertex set. Two players, Left and…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Florian Galliot , Jonas Sénizergues

A subset of the vertex set of a graph is geodetically convex if it contains every vertex on any shortest path between two elements of the subset. The convex hull of a set of vertices is the smallest convex set containing the set. We study…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-05-14 Bret J. Benesh , Dana C. Ernst , Marie Meyer , Sarah K. Salmon , Nandor Sieben

The UNIQUE GAMES problem is a central problem in algorithms and complexity theory. Given an instance of UNIQUE GAMES, the STRONG UNIQUE GAMES problem asks to find the largest subset of vertices, such that the UNIQUE GAMES instance induced…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-05-19 Suprovat Ghoshal , Anand Louis

Positional games have been introduced by Hales and Jewett in 1963 and have been extensively investigated in the literature since then. These games are played on a hypergraph where two players alternately select an unclaimed vertex of it. In…

Fortification-interdiction games are tri-level adversarial games where two opponents act in succession to protect, disrupt and simply use an infrastructure for a specific purpose. Many such games have been formulated and tackled in the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-12-22 Alberto Boggio Tomasaz , Margarida Carvalho , Roberto Cordone , Pierre Hosteins

We build off the game, NimG to create a version named Neighboring Nim. By reducing from Geography, we show that this game is PSPACE-hard. The games created by the reduction share strong similarities with Undirected (Vertex) Geography and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-10-08 Kyle Burke , Olivia George

Concavity and its refinements underpin tractability in multiplayer games, where players independently choose actions to maximize their own payoffs which depend on other players' actions. In concave games, where players' strategy sets are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Vincent Leon , Iosif Sakos , Ryann Sim , Antonios Varvitsiotis