Related papers: Combinatorial games played randomly: Chomp and nim
We consider two-player normal form games where each player has the same finite strategy set. The payoffs of each player are assumed to be i.i.d. random variables with a continuous distribution. We show that, with high probability, the…
When normal and mis\`{e}re games are played on bi-type binary Galton-Watson trees (with vertices coloured blue or red and each having either no child or precisely $2$ children), with one player allowed to move along monochromatic edges and…
We consider various probabilistic games with piles for one player or two players. In each round of the game, a player randomly chooses to add $a$ or $b$ chips to his pile under the condition that $a$ and $b$ are not necessarily positive. If…
We consider a random knockout tournament among players $1, \ldots, n$, in which each match involves two players. The match format is specified by the number of matches played in each round, where the constitution of the matches in a round…
Due to their complex dynamics, combinatorial games are a key test case and application for algorithms that train game playing agents. Among those algorithms that train using self-play are coevolutionary algorithms (CoEAs). However, the…
In this paper we introduce polytopal stochastic games, an extension of two-player, zero-sum, turn-based stochastic games, in which we may have uncertainty over the transition probabilities. In these games the uncertainty over the…
The ordinary game of Nim has a long history and is well-known in the area of combinatorial game theory. The solution to the ordinary game of Nim has been known for many years and lends itself to numerous other solutions to combinatorial…
The game of Nim, which has been well known for many years, has numerous variations. One such variation is Circular Nim, where piles of stones are arranged on a circumference, and players take stones from consecutive adjacent piles in one…
New combinatorial games are introduced, of which the most pertinent is Maharaja Nim. The rules extend those of the well-known impartial game of Wythoff Nim in which two players take turn in moving a single Queen of Chess on a large board,…
We analyze the computational complexity of optimally playing the two-player board game Push Fight, generalized to an arbitrary board and number of pieces. We prove that the game is PSPACE-hard to decide who will win from a given position,…
Given $n$ piles of tokens and a positive integer $k \leq n$, we study the following two impartial combinatorial games Nim$^1_{n, \leq k}$ and Nim$^1_{n, =k}$. In the first (resp. second) game, a player, by one move, chooses at least $1$ and…
We consider the combinatorial problem where $p$ players aim to a complete set of $N$ different types of items (species) which are uniformly distributed. Let the random variables $T_{N(i)},\,\,i=1,2,\cdots,p$ denoting the number of trials…
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…
Consider the following game between a random player R and a deterministic player D. There is a pile of n elements at the beginning. The rules for playing are as follows: In each turn of R, if the pile contains exactly m elements, R removes…
Understanding the properties of games played under computational constraints remains challenging. For example, how do we expect rational (but computationally bounded) players to play games with a prohibitively large number of states, such…
We study games with finitely many participants, each having finitely many choices. We consider the following categories of participants: (I) populations: sets of nonatomic agents, (II) atomic splittable players, (III) atomic non splittable…
We study the $k$-jump normal and $k$-jump mis\`{e}re games on rooted Galton-Watson trees, expressing the probabilities of various outcomes of these games as specific fixed points of certain functions that depend on $k$ and the offspring…
Combinatorial/probabilistic models for cross-country dual-meets are proposed. The first model assumes that all runners are equally likely to finish in any possible order. The second model assumes that each team is selected from a large…
In sports competitions, teams can manipulate the result by, for instance, throwing games. We show that we can decide how to manipulate round robin and cup competitions, two of the most popular types of sporting competitions in polynomial…
We study the effectiveness of iterated elimination of strictly-dominated actions in random games. We show that dominance solvability of games is vanishingly small as the number of at least one player's actions grows. Furthermore,…