Related papers: In How Ways Can You Play Stanley Solitaire?
In his paper, "On a Partition Function of Richard Stanley," George Andrews proves a certain partition identity analytically and asks for a combinatorial proof. This paper provides the requested combinatorial proof.
Quantum game theory offers a lot of interesting questions, and it is relevant to use the quantum information theory to resolve or improve games with lack of information : how to use the power of quantum entanglement to show the superiority…
These lecture notes attempt a mathematical treatment of game theory akin to mathematical physics. A game instance is defined as a sequence of states of an underlying system. This viewpoint unifies classical mathematical models for 2-person…
In this paper we survey the computational time complexity of assorted simple stochastic game problems, and we give an overview of the best known algorithms associated with each problem.
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…
In 1979, David Fabian found a complete game of two-person Chinese Checkers in 30 moves (15 by each player) [Martin Gardner, Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers, MAA, 1997]. This solution requires that the two players cooperate to generate a…
Simple stochastic games are turn-based 2.5-player zero-sum graph games with a reachability objective. The problem is to compute the winning probability as well as the optimal strategies of both players. In this paper, we compare the three…
A certain sampling process, concerning an urn with balls of two colors, proposed in 1965 by B.E. Oakley and R.L. Perry, and discussed by Peter Winkler and Martin Gardner, that has an extremely simple answer for the probability, namely the…
We present an analysis of a coin-tossing problem posed by Daniel Litt which has generated some popular interest. We demonstrate a recursive identity which leads to relatively simple formulas for the excess number of wins for one player over…
We consider the following simple game: We are given a table with ten slots indexed one to ten. In each of the ten rounds of the game, three dice are rolled and the numbers are added. We then put this number into any free slot. For each…
We analyze misere play of impartial tic-tac-toe---a game suggested by Bob Koca in which both players make X's on the board, and the first player to complete three-in-a-row loses. This game was recently discussed on mathoverflow.net in a…
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…
We analyze a game introduced by Andy Niedermaier, where $p$ players take turns throwing a dart at a dartboard. A player is eliminated unless his dart lands closer to the center than all previously thrown darts, in which case he goes to the…
Evolutionary game dynamics of two players with two strategies has been studied in great detail. These games have been used to model many biologically relevant scenarios, ranging from social dilemmas in mammals to microbial diversity. Some…
Given a set of integers with no three in arithmetic progression, we construct a Stanley sequence by adding integers greedily so that no arithmetic progression is formed. This paper offers two main contributions to the theory of Stanley…
The Stackelberg equilibrium solution concept describes optimal strategies to commit to: Player 1 (termed the leader) publicly commits to a strategy and Player 2 (termed the follower) plays a best response to this strategy (ties are broken…
Here, we present a variant of the sliding coins game. Two coins are placed on distinct squares of a semi-infinite linear board with squares numbered $0, 1, 2, dots, $. Two players take turns and move a coin to a lower unoccupied square.…
Poset games have been the object of mathematical study for over a century, but little has been written on the computational complexity of determining important properties of these games. In this introduction we develop the fundamentals of…
These notes provide a survey of the theory of plane partitions, seen through the glasses of the work of Richard Stanley and his school.
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…