Related papers: Combinatorial games played randomly: Chomp and nim

For normal play, impartial games, we define penults as those positions in which every option results in an immediate win for the other player. We explore the number of tokens in penults of two positional games, Impartial Tic and Impartial…

The MandM Game involves two players who begin with I1 and I2 MandM's. During each round, each player tosses a fair coin: if the coin lands heads, that player eats one MandM, and if it lands tails, the player does not eat. If, at the end of…

We study a game in which one keeps flipping a coin until a given finite string of heads and tails occurs. We find the expected number of coin flips to end the game when the ending string consists of at most four maximal runs of heads or…

Let A be a finite subset of $\nat$. Then NIM(A;n) is the following 2-player game: initially there are $n$ stones on the board and the players alternate removing $a\in A$ stones. The first player who cannot move loses. This game has been…

We analyze the performance of the best-response dynamic across all normal-form games using a random games approach. The playing sequence -- the order in which players update their actions -- is essentially irrelevant in determining whether…

We consider finite two-player normal form games with random payoffs. Player A's payoffs are i.i.d. from a uniform distribution. Given p in [0, 1], for any action profile, player B's payoff coincides with player A's payoff with probability p…

Evolutionary games on networks traditionally involve the same game at each interaction. Here we depart from this assumption by considering mixed games, where the game played at each interaction is drawn uniformly at random from a set of two…

This paper studies a single-suit version of the card game War on a finite deck of cards. There are varying methods of how players put the cards that they win back into their hands, but we primarily consider randomly putting the cards back…

Probabilistic game structures combine both nondeterminism and stochasticity, where players repeatedly take actions simultaneously to move to the next state of the concurrent game. Probabilistic alternating simulation is an important tool to…

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…

We study operators that combine combinatorial games. This field was initiated by Sprague-Grundy (1930s), Milnor (1950s) and Berlekamp-Conway-Guy (1970-80s) via the now classical disjunctive sum operator on (abstract) games. The new class…

We study an ensemble of individuals playing the two games of the so-called Parrondo paradox. In our study, players are allowed to choose the game to be played by the whole ensemble in each turn. The choice cannot conform to the preferences…

We construct a statistical ensemble of games, where in each independent subensemble we have two players playing the same game. We derive the mean payoffs per move of the representative players of the game, and we evaluate all the…

Cops and Robbers games have been studied for the last few decades in computer science and mathematics. As in general pursuit evasion games, pursuers (cops) seek to capture evaders (robbers); however, players move in turn and are constrained…

Stochastic games combine controllable and adversarial non-determinism with stochastic behavior and are a common tool in control, verification and synthesis of reactive systems facing uncertainty. Multi-objective stochastic games are natural…

The Parrondo effect describes the seemingly paradoxical situation in which two losing games can, when combined, become winning [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 24 (2000)]. Here we generalize this analysis to the case where both games are…

This paper provides effective methods for the polyhedral formulation of impartial finite combinatorial games as lattice games. Given a rational strategy for a lattice game, a polynomial time algorithm is presented to decide (i) whether a…

Nim is a well-known combinatorial game with several variants, e.g., Delete Nim and Variant Delete Nim. In Variant Delete Nim, the player deletes one of the two heaps of stones and splits the other heap on his/her turn. In this paper, we…

Two players alternate moves in the following impartial combinatorial game: Given a finitely generated abelian group $A$, a move consists of picking some nonzero element $a \in A$. The game then continues with the quotient group $A/ \langle…

When modeling robot interactions as Nash equilibrium problems, it is desirable to place coupled constraints which restrict these interactions to be safe and acceptable (for instance, to avoid collisions). Such games are continuous with…