English
Related papers

Related papers: On sequences arising from randomizing subtraction …

200 papers

We study the effects of randomness on competitions based on an elementary random process in which there is a finite probability that a weaker team upsets a stronger team. We apply this model to sports leagues and sports tournaments, and…

Physics and Society · Physics 2013-04-02 E. Ben-Naim , N. W. Hengartner , S. Redner , F. Vazquez

We introduce a class of normal play partizan games, called Complementary Subtraction. Let $A$ denote your favorite set of positive integers. This is Left's subtraction set, whereas Right subtracts numbers not in $A$. The Golden Nugget…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-10-27 Urban Larsson , Neil A. McKay , Richard J. Nowakowski , Angela A. Siegel

In this paper, we consider a game beginning with a multiset of elements from a group. On a move, two elements are replaced by their sum. This is a no strategy game, and can be modeled as a graded poset with the rank of a node equal to the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-07-02 Caleb Ji

We introduce and study Maker/Breaker-type positional games on random graphs. Our main concern is to determine the threshold probability $p_{F}$ for the existence of Maker's strategy to claim a member of $F$ in the unbiased game played on…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Milos Stojakovic , Tibor Szabo

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Jan Vrbik , Paul Vrbik

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-26 Yehonatan Fridman

We introduce the game Slow $A$-Nim which generalizes a number of recently studied games. Slow $A$-Nim is played on $n$ stacks of tokens, and the set $A$ indicates the number of stacks a player can play on. Once a player has decided on the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-24 Silvia Heubach , Matthieu Dufour

We study zero-sum games, a variant of the classical combinatorial Subtraction games (studied for example in the monumental work "Winning Ways", by Berlekamp, Conway and Guy), called Cumulative Subtraction (CS). Two players alternate in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-02-14 Gal Cohensius , Urban Larsson , Reshef Meir , David Wahlstedt

We study 2-player impartial games, so called \emph{invariant subtraction games}, of the type, given a set of allowed moves the players take turn in moving one single piece on a large Chess board towards the position $\boldsymbol 0$. Here,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-09-23 Urban Larsson

We introduce a class of stochastic integer sequences. In these sequences, every element is a sum of two previous elements, at least one of which is chosen randomly. The interplay between randomness and memory underlying these sequences…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 E. Ben-Naim , P. L. Krapivsky

Let $a$, $b$, and $n$ be integers with $0<a<b<n$. In a certain two-player probabilistic chip-collecting game, Alice tosses a coin to determine whether she collects $a$ chips or $b$ chips. If Alice collects $a$ chips, then Bob collects $b$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-10-06 Joshua Harrington , Xuwen Hua , Xufei Liu , Alex Nash , Rodrigo Rios , Tony W. H. Wong

Impartial subtraction games on the nonnegative integers have been studied by many and discussed in detail in for example the remarkable work Winning Ways by Conway, Berlekamp and Guy. We describe how comply variations of these games,…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2012-09-11 Urban Larsson

We introduce a natural variant of the parallel chip-firing game, called the diffusion game. Chips are initially assigned to vertices of a graph. At every step, all vertices simultaneously send one chip to each neighbour with fewer chips. As…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2023-06-22 C. Duffy , T. F. Lidbetter , M. E. Messinger , R. J. Nowakowski

We find conditions under which the P-positions of three subtraction games arise as pairs of complementary Beatty sequences. The first game is due to Fraenkel and the second is an extension of the first game to non-monotone settings. We show…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-04-13 Jon Kay , Geremias Polanco

Pursuit-evasion games, such as the game of Revolutionaries and Spies, are a simplified model for network security. In the game we consider in this paper, a team of $r$ revolutionaries tries to hold an unguarded meeting consisting of $m$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-06-12 Dieter Mitsche , Pawel Pralat

In this article, we consider some simple combinatorial game and a winning strategy in this game. This game is then used to prove several known results about non-repetitive sequences and approximations with denominators from a lacunary…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-03-27 Matthieu Rosenfeld , Alexander Shen

A set $A$ is said to split a finite set $B$ if exactly half the elements of $B$ (up to rounding) are contained in $A$. We study the dual notions: (1) splitting family, which is a collection of sets such that any subset of $\{1,\ldots,k\}$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-03-15 Samuel Coskey , Bryce Frederickson , Samuel Mathers , Hao-Tong Yan

Inspired by the Japanese game Pachinko, we study simple (perfectly "inelastic" collisions) dynamics of a unit ball falling amidst point obstacles (pins) in the plane. A classic example is that a checkerboard grid of pins produces the…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2016-01-22 Hugo A. Akitaya , Erik D. Demaine , Martin L. Demaine , Adam Hesterberg , Ferran Hurtado , Jason S. Ku , Jayson Lynch

We introduce the game of Cat Herding, where an omnipresent herder slowly cuts down a graph until an evasive cat player has nowhere to go. The number of cuts made is the score of a game, and we study the score under optimal play. In this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-09-23 Rylo Ashmore , Danny Dyer , Trent Marbach , Rebecca Milley

We consider the generalized game Lights Out played on a graph and investigate the following question: for a given positive integer $n$, what is the probability that a graph chosen uniformly at random from the set of graphs with $n$ vertices…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-08-10 Bradley Forrest , Nicole Manno