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Related papers: Mis\`ere Greedy Nim and Mis\`ere Bounded Greedy Ni…

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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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-05-30 Alan Guo , Ezra Miller

We study two impartial games introduced by Anderson and Harary and further developed by Barnes. Both games are played by two players who alternately select previously unselected elements of a finite group. The first player who builds a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-12 Dana C. Ernst , Nandor Sieben

We study 2-player impartial games of the form take-away which produce P-positions (second player winning positions) corresponding to complementary Beatty sequences, given by the continued fractions (1;k,1,k,1,...) and (k+1;k,1,k,1,...). Our…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-02-04 Urban Larsson , Mike Weimerskirch

Inspired by the theory of poset games, we introduce a new compound of impartial combinatorial games and provide a complete analysis in the spirit of the Sprague-Grundy theory. Furthermore, we establish several substitution and reduction…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-05-19 Mišo Gavrilović , Alexander Thumm

We introduce a misere quotient semigroup construction in impartial combinatorial game theory, and argue that it is the long-sought natural generalization of the normal-play Sprague-Grundy theory to misere play. Along the way, we illustrate…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Thane E. Plambeck

Richman games are zero-sum games, where in each turn players bid in order to determine who will play next [Lazarus et al.'99]. We extend the theory to impartial general-sum two player games called \emph{bidding games}, showing the existence…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-08-13 Gil Kalai , Reshef Meir , Moshe Tennenholtz

Wythoff's Nim is a variant of 2-pile Nim in which players are allowed to take any positive number of stones from pile 1, or any positive number of stones from pile 2, or the same positive number from both piles. The player who makes the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-08-08 Mirabel Hu , Daniel Sleator , William Tsin

We examine short combinatorial games for three or more players under a new play convention in which a player who cannot move on their turn is the unique loser. We show that many theorems of impartial and partizan two-player games under…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-05 Mark Spindler

We compare to different extensions of the ancient game of nim: Moore's nim$(n, \leq k)$ and exact nim$(n, = k)$. Given integers $n$ and $k$ such that $0 < k \leq n$, we consider $n$ piles of stones. Two players alternate turns. By one move…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-12-01 Vladimir Gurvich , Artem Parfenov , Michael Vyalyi

In this paper, we study an impartial game called Delete Nim. In this game, there are two heaps of stones. The player chooses one of the heaps and delete the other heap. Next, she takes away one stone from the chosen heap and optionally…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-08-22 Koki Suetsugu , Tomoaki Abuku

We study an impartial game introduced by Anderson and Harary. The game is played by two players who alternately choose previously-unselected elements of a finite group. The first player who builds a generating set from the jointly-selected…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2024-02-12 Bret J. Benesh , Dana C. Ernst , Nandor Sieben

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-17 Ryuya Hora

In an amalgamation Nim, players are allowed to use a move from the traditional form of Nim or to amalgamate two piles when they are not empty. No formula that describes the set of P-positions of Amalgamation Nim is known. The author gives a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-25 Hikaru Manabe

The concept of nimbers--a.k.a. Grundy-values or nim-values--is fundamental to combinatorial game theory. Nimbers provide a complete characterization of strategic interactions among impartial games in their disjunctive sums as well as the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-02-24 Kyle Burke , Matthew Ferland , Shanghua Teng

A finite impartial game is a two-player game in which the players take turns making moves and the game ends after finitely many moves. In this paper, we study a class of finite impartial games introduced by H.~Lenstra, which we call coin…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-17 Masao Ishikawa , Toyokazu Ohmoto , Hiroyuki Tagawa , Yoshiki Takayama

We introduce and analyse an extension of the disjunctive sum operation on some classical impartial games. Whereas the disjunctive sum describes positions formed from independent subpositions, our operation combines positions that are not…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-02-24 Graham Farr , Nhan Bao Ho

We propose a variant of Nim, named StrNim. Whereas a position in Nim is a tuple of non-negative integers, that in StrNim is a string, a sequence of characters. In every turn, each player shrinks the string, by removing a substring repeating…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-25 Shota Mizuno , Ryo Yoshinaka , Ayumi Shinohara

We study a variation of the combinatorial game of 2-pile Nim. Move as in 2-pile Nim but with the following constraint: Suppose the previous player has just removed say $x>0$ tokens from the shorter pile (either pile in case they have the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-06-02 Urban Larsson

We study two impartial games introduced by Anderson and Harary. Both games are played by two players who alternately select previously-unselected elements of a finite group. The first player who builds a generating set from the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-12 Bret J. Benesh , Dana C. Ernst , Nandor Sieben

Combinatorial Game Theory has also been called `additive game theory', whenever the analysis involves sums of independent game components. Such {\em disjunctive sums} invoke comparison between games, which allows abstract values to be…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-01-29 Urban Larsson , Richard J. Nowakowski , Carlos P. Santos