Related papers: Josephus Nim
We find out the number of different partitions of an n-kilogram stone into the minimum number of parts so that all integral weights from 1 to n kilograms can be weighed in one weighing using the parts of any of the partitions on a two-pan…
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…
This contribution deals with a two-level discrete decision problem, a so-called Stackelberg strategic game: A Subset Sum setting is addressed with a set $N$ of items with given integer weights. One distinguished player, the leader, may…
The Ultimatum Game is a famous sequential, two-player game intensely studied in Game Theory. A proposer can offer a certain fraction of some amount of a valuable good, for example, money. A responder can either accept, in which case the…
Certain endgame considerations in the two-player Nigerian Mancala-type game Ayo can be identified with the problem of finding winning positions in the solitaire game Tchoukaitlon. The periodicity of the pit occupancies in $s$ stone winning…
Mathematics has been used in the exploration and enumeration of juggling patterns. In the case when we catch and throw one ball at a time the number of possible juggling patterns is well-known. When we are allowed to catch and throw any…
Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We use this decomposition to construct a two-player game. Given a fixed integer $n$ and an initial decomposition of $n=n…
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…
We give explicit formulas for ruin probabilities in a multidimensional Generalized Gambler's ruin problem. The generalization is best interpreted as a game of one player against $d$ other players, allowing arbitrary winning and losing…
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…
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…
We consider the recently introduced knotting-unknotting game, in which two players take turns resolving crossings in a knot diagram which initially is missing all its crossing information. Once the knot is fully resolved, the winner is…
The game of war is one of the most popular international children's card games. In the beginning of the game, the pack is split into two parts, then on each move the players reveal their top cards. The player having the highest card…
The balance game is played on a graph $G$ by two players, Admirable (A) and Impish (I), who take turns selecting unlabeled vertices of $G$. Admirable labels the selected vertices by $0$ and Impish by $1$, and the resulting label on any edge…
We consider a matching problem, which is meaningful in team competitions, as well as in information theory, recommender systems, and assignment problems. In the competitions which we study, each competitor in a team order plays a match with…
We revisit the game in which each of several players chooses a pattern and then a coin is flipped repeatedly until one of these patterns is generated. In particular, we demonstrate how to compute the probability of any one player winning…
Let f(1)=1, and let f(n+1)=2^{2^{f(n)}} for every positive integer n. We conjecture that if a system S \subseteq {x_i \cdot x_j=x_k: i,j,k \in {1,...,n}} \cup {x_i+1=x_k: i,k \in {1,...,n}} has only finitely many solutions in non-negative…
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…
In the 2-choice allocation problem, $m$ balls are placed into $n$ bins, and each ball must choose between two random bins $i, j \in [n]$ that it has been assigned to. It has been known for more than two decades, that if each ball follows…
In the game "Super Six", after successfully getting rid of a stick by rolling with the die a number that is not occupied, the player has the choice to continue to roll the die or to stop and to hand over the die to their opponent. The…