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In this paper we introduce and study the domination game on hypergraphs. This is played on a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ by two players, namely Dominator and Staller, who alternately select vertices such that each selected vertex enlarges the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-10-03 Csilla Bujtás , Balázs Patkós , Zsolt Tuza , Máté vizer

We study the $(a:b)$ Maker-Breaker subgraph game played on the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ on $n$ vertices, $n,a,b \in \mathbb{N}$ where the goal of Maker is to build a copy of a specific fixed subgraph $H$. In our work this is a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-06-18 Adnane Fouadi , Mourad El Ouali , Anand Srivastav

We study the Maker-Breaker domination game played by Dominator and Staller on the vertex set of a given graph. Dominator wins when the vertices he has claimed form a dominating set of the graph. Staller wins if she makes it impossible for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-04-17 Jovana Forcan , Jiayue Qi

We prove that for each $D\ge 2$ there exists $c>0$ such that whenever $b\le c\big(\tfrac{n}{\log n}\big)^{1/D}$, in the $(1:b)$ Maker-Breaker game played on $E(K_n)$, Maker has a strategy to guarantee claiming a graph $G$ containing copies…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-11-16 Peter Allen , Julia Böttcher , Yoshiharu Kohayakawa , Humberto Naves , Yury Person

In a $(1:b)$ biased Maker-Breaker game, how good a strategy is for a player can be measured by the bias range for which its rival can win, choosing an appropriate counterstrategy. Bednarska and {\L}uczak proved that, in the $H$-subgraph…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-07-11 Ander Lamaison

Parity games are games that are played on directed graphs whose vertices are labeled by natural numbers, called priorities. The players push a token along the edges of the digraph. The winner is determined by the parity of the greatest…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Christoph Dittmann , Stephan Kreutzer , Alexandru I. Tomescu

We study the two-player game where Maker and Breaker alternately color the edges of a given graph $G$ with $k$ colors such that adjacent edges never get the same color. Maker's goal is to play such that at the end of the game, all edges are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-02-14 Ralph Keusch

Waiter-Client games are played on some hypergraph $(X,\mathcal{F})$, where $\mathcal{F}$ denotes the family of winning sets. For some bias $b$, during each round of such a game Waiter offers to Client $b+1$ elements of $X$, of which Client…

In many combinatorial games, one can prove that the first player wins under best play using a simple but non-constructive argument called strategy-stealing. This work is about the complexity behind these proofs: how hard is it to actually…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-11-19 Greg Bodwin , Ofer Grossman

Let $d(x,y)$ denote the length of a shortest path between vertices $x$ and $y$ in a graph $G$ with vertex set $V$. For a positive integer $k$, let $d_k(x,y)=\min\{d(x,y), k+1\}$ and $R_k\{x,y\}=\{z\in V: d_k(x,z) \neq d_k(y,z)\}$. A set $S…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-01-02 Cong X. Kang , Eunjeong Yi

In a strong game played on the edge set of a graph G there are two players, Red and Blue, alternating turns in claiming previously unclaimed edges of G (with Red playing first). The winner is the first one to claim all the edges of some…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-07-19 Asaf Ferber , Pascal Pfister

We prove that Strings-and-Coins -- the combinatorial two-player game generalizing the dual of Dots-and-Boxes -- is strongly PSPACE-complete on multigraphs. This result improves the best previous result, NP-hardness, argued in Winning Ways.…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2023-10-27 Erik D. Demaine , Jenny Diomidova

In repeated games, players choose actions concurrently at each step. We consider a parameterized setting of repeated games in which the players form a population of an arbitrary size. Their utility functions encode a reachability objective.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Nathalie Bertrand , Patricia Bouyer , Luc Lapointe , Corto Mascle

We study the $(m,b)$ Maker-Breaker percolation game on $\mathbb{Z}^2$, introduced by Day and Falgas-Ravry. As our first result, we show that Breaker has a winning strategy for the $(m,b)$-game whenever $b \geq (2-\frac{1}{14} + o(1))m$,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-05-28 Vojtěch Dvořák , Adva Mond , Victor Souza

We study the following combinatorial game played by two players, Alice and Bob, which generalizes the Pizza game considered by Brown, Winkler and others. Given a connected graph G with nonnegative weights assigned to its vertices, the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2013-08-07 Josef Cibulka , Jan Kynčl , Viola Mészáros , Rudolf Stolař , Pavel Valtr

We define a new escape game in graphs that we call Nemesis. The game is played on a graph having a subset of vertices labeled as exits and the goal of one of the two players, called the fugitive, is to reach one of these exit vertices. The…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Pierre Bergé , Antoine Dailly , Yan Gerard

One of the main objective of this paper is to relate Beck's conjecture for k-in-a-row games. The conjecture states that playing on the same board Picker is better off in a Chooser-Picker game than the second player in the Maker-Breaker…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-04-15 András Csernenszky

In this work, we investigate Maker-Breaker directed triangle games, a directionally constrained variant of the classical Maker-Breaker triangle game. Our board of interest is a tournament, and the winning sets are all $3$-cycles present in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-20 Hrishikesh Jagtap , Moumanti Podder

The concept of biased Maker-Breaker games, introduced by Chv\'atal and Erd{\H o}s, is a central topic in the field of positional games, with deep connections to the theory of random structures. For any given hypergraph ${\cal H}$ the main…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-08-06 Christopher Kusch , Juanjo Rué , Christoph Spiegel , Tibor Szabó

We consider a Maker-Breaker type game on the plane, in which each player takes $t$ points on their $t^\textrm{th}$ turn. Maker wins if he obtains $n$ points on a line (in any direction) without any of Breaker's points between them. We show…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-01-08 Joshua Erde , Mark Walters