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The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented 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…
This paper studies the complexity of computing a representation of a simple game as the intersection (union) of weighted majority games, as well as, the dimension or the codimension. We also present some examples with linear dimension and…
Quitting games are one of the simplest stochastic games in which at any stage each player has only two possible actions, continue and quit. The game ends as soon as at least one player chooses to quit. The players then receive a payoff,…
Clobber is a new two-player board game. In this paper, we introduce the one-player variant Solitaire Clobber where the goal is to remove as many stones as possible from the board by alternating white and black moves. We show that a…
All roads lead to Rome is the core idea of the puzzle game Roma. It is played on an $n \times n$ grid consisting of quadratic cells. Those cells are grouped into boxes of at most four neighboring cells and are either filled, or to be…
We consider average-energy games, where the goal is to minimize the long-run average of the accumulated energy. While several results have been obtained on these games recently, decidability of average-energy games with a lower-bound…
Using a bijective proof, we show the number of ways to arrange a maximum number of nonattacking pawns on a $2m\times 2m$ chessboard is ${2m\choose m}^2$, and more generally, the number of ways to arrange a maximum number of nonattacking…
We show that the problem of finding an {\epsilon}-approximate Nash equilibrium in an anonymous game with seven pure strategies is complete in PPAD, when the approximation parameter {\epsilon} is exponentially small in the number of players.
Modern board games are a rich source of interesting and new challenges for combinatorial problems. The game Nmbr9 is a solitaire style puzzle game using polyominoes. The rules of the game are simple to explain, but modelling the game…
Energy parity games are infinite two-player turn-based games played on weighted graphs. The objective of the game combines a (qualitative) parity condition with the (quantitative) requirement that the sum of the weights (i.e., the level of…
We consider an assignment problem that has aspects of fair division as well as social choice. In particular, we investigate the problem of assigning a small subset from a set of indivisible items to multiple players so that the chosen…
Recent advances in game AI, such as AlphaZero and Ath\'enan, have achieved superhuman performance across a wide range of board games. While highly powerful, these agents are ill-suited for human-AI interaction, as they consistently…
In this work, we study a triangular variant of the Lights Out game, proposed in the 2025 Capixaba Mathematics Olympiad. We present a combinatorial description of the game, formally characterize its operations, and introduce the notion of a…
We discuss weak and strong links (`virtual connections') in the Shannon game. General properties of these links are discussed, leading to a method to find all links of given size by a suitably pruned exhaustive search. This is applied to…
The Game of Poker Chips, Dominoes and Survival fosters team building and high level cooperation in large groups, and is a tool applied in management training exercises. Each player, initially given two colored poker chips, is allowed to…
The domination game is played on a graph $G$ by two players, named Dominator and Staller. They alternatively select vertices of $G$ such that each chosen vertex enlarges the set of vertices dominated before the move on it. Dominator's goal…
This paper explores the Nash equilibria of a variant of the Colonel Blotto game, which we call the Asymmetric Colonel Blotto game. In the Colonel Blotto game, two players simultaneously distribute forces across $n$ battlefields. Within each…
We study the computational complexity of the popular board game backgammon. We show that deciding whether a player can win from a given board configuration is NP-Hard, PSPACE-Hard, and EXPTIME-Hard under different settings of known and…
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…
We expand the theory of pebbling to graphs with weighted edges. In a weighted pebbling game, one player distributes a set amount of weight on the edges of a graph and his opponent chooses a target vertex and places a configuration of…