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Related papers: Subtraction games in more than one dimension

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Coloring games are combinatorial games where the players alternate painting uncolored vertices of a graph one of $k > 0$ colors. Each different ruleset specifies that game's coloring constraints. This paper investigates six impartial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-02-28 Gabriel Beaulieu , Kyle Burke , Eric Duchêne

A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The main object of combinatorial game theory is to obtain the outcome, which player has a winning strategy, of a given combinatorial game. Positions of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-27 Kengo Hashimoto

We consider the permutation analogue of Penney's game for words. Two players, in order, each choose a permutation of length $k\ge3$; then a sequence of independent random values from a continuous distribution is generated, until the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-29 Sergi Elizalde , Yixin Lin

We provide a criterion for determining the winner in two-player win-lose alternating-move games on trees, in terms of the Hausdorff dimension of the target set. We focus our study on special cases, including the Gale-Stewart game on the…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2026-05-14 Itamar Bellaïche , Auriel Rosenzweig

We consider combinatorial avoidance and achievement games based on graph Ramsey theory: The players take turns in coloring still uncolored edges of a graph G, each player being assigned a distinct color, choosing one edge per move. In…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Wolfgang Slany

Combinatorial games are two-player games of pure strategy where the players, usually called Left and Right, move alternately. In this paper, we introduce Cheating Robot games. These arise from simultaneous-play combinatorial games where one…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-02-11 Melissa A. Huggan , Richard J. Nowakowski

We determine the full nim-value structure of additive subtraction games in the {\em primitive quadratic} regime. The problem appears in Winning Ways by Berlekamp et al. in 1982; it includes a closed formula, involving Beatty-type {\em…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Urban Larsson , Hikaru Manabe

This paper studies sequential quantum games under the assumption that the moves of the players are drawn from groups and not just plain sets. The extra group structure makes possible to easily derive some very general results characterizing…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-03-14 Theodore Andronikos

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-02-09 Urban Larsson

We examine short combinatorial games for three or more players under a new play convention in which a player who cannot move on their turn is the unique loser. We show that many theorems of impartial and partizan two-player games under…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-05 Mark Spindler

We introduce CUT, the class of 2-player partition games. These are NIM type games, played on a finite number of heaps of beans. The rules are given by a set of positive integers, which specifies the number of allowed splits a player can…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Antoine Dailly , Eric Duchene , Urban Larsson , Gabrielle Paris

Subtraction games are played with one or more heaps of tokens, with players taking turns removing from a single heap a number of tokens belonging to a specified subtraction set; the last player to move wins. We describe how to compute the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2018-04-19 David Eppstein

In this note, we investigate combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random). In this model, we provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-01-31 Pat Devlin , Paulina Trifonova

Consider a rooted Galton-Watson tree $T$, to each of whose edges we assign, independently, a weight that equals $+1$ with probability $p_{1}$, $0$ with probability $p_{0}$ and $-1$ with probability $p_{-1}=1-p_{1}-p_{0}$. We play a game on…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-01-16 Sayar Karmakar , Moumanti Podder , Souvik Roy , Soumyarup Sadhukhan

Subtraction games are a class of impartial combinatorial games whose positions correspond to nonnegative integers and whose moves correspond to subtracting one of a fixed set of numbers from the current position. Though they are easy to…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-07-11 Nathan Fox

We consider two-player games played on weighted directed graphs with mean-payoff and total-payoff objectives, two classical quantitative objectives. While for single-dimensional games the complexity and memory bounds for both objectives…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-11-04 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Laurent Doyen , Mickael Randour , Jean-François Raskin

The study of combinatorial games is intimately tied to the study of graphs, as any game can be realized as a directed graph in which players take turns traversing the edges until reaching a sink. However, there have heretofore been few…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-05-21 Craig Tennenhouse

We introduce and analyze the ordered Zeckendorf game, a novel combinatorial two-player game inspired by Zeckendorf's Theorem, which guarantees a unique decomposition of every positive integer as a sum of non-consecutive Fibonacci numbers.…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Ivan Bortnovskyi , Michael Lucas , Steven J. Miller , Iana Vranesko , Ren Watson , Cameron White

Muller games are played by two players moving a token along a graph; the winner is determined by the set of vertices that occur infinitely often. The central algorithmic problem is to compute the winning regions for the players. Different…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2013-07-24 A. Grinshpun , P. Phalitnonkiat , S. Rubin , A. Tarfulea

This paper considers a natural ruleset for playing a partisan combinatorial game on a directed graph, which we call Digraph Placement. Given a digraph $G$ with a not necessarily proper $2$-coloring of $V(G)$, the Digraph Placement game…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Alexander Clow , Neil A McKay