Related papers: Geometric Give and Take
We develop a minimal, timeless game-theoretic representation of the mass-geometry relation. An "Object" (mass) and "Space" (geometry) choose strategies in a static normal-form game; utilities encode stability as mutual consistency rather…
We present three versions of the classic two-pile game \textsc{one-or-one-or-one-of-both} generalized to the multi-pile context. In each case, we explore the resulting $\mathcal{P}$-positions. In the first version, there is a simple…
The Mermin-Peres magic square game is a cooperative two-player nonlocal game in which shared quantum entanglement allows the players to win with certainty, while players limited to classical operations cannot do so, a phenomenon dubbed…
We consider a variant of the game of Cops and Robbers, called Containment, in which cops move from edge to adjacent edge, the robber moves from vertex to adjacent vertex (but cannot move along an edge occupied by a cop). The cops win by…
Linear system games are a generalization of Mermin's magic square game introduced by Cleve and Mittal. They show that perfect strategies for linear system games in the tensor-product model of entanglement correspond to finite-dimensional…
A pebbling move on a weighted graph removes some pebbles at a vertex and adds one pebble at an adjacent vertex. The number of pebbles removed is the weight of the edge connecting the vertices. A vertex is reachable from a pebble…
We consider a $\phi$-mixing shift $T$ on a sequence space $\Omega$ and study the number of returns $\{ T^k\omega\in U\}$ to a union $U$ of cylinders of length $n$ until the first return $\{ T^k\omega\in V\}$ to another union $V$ of cylinder…
Minimal balanced collections are a generalization of partitions of a finite set of n elements and have important applications in cooperative game theory and discrete mathematics. However, their number is not known beyond n = 4. In this…
The Maker-Breaker domination game is played on a graph $G$ by two players, called Dominator and Staller, who alternately choose a vertex that has not been played so far. Dominator wins the game if his moves form a dominating set. Staller…
A classic theorem of Euclidean geometry asserts that any noncollinear set of $n$ points in the plane determines at least $n$ distinct lines. Chen and Chv\'atal conjectured that this holds for an arbitrary finite metric space, with a certain…
We create a new two-player game on the Sperner Triangle based on Sperner's lemma. Our game has simple rules and several desirable properties. First, the game is always certain to have a winner. Second, like many other interesting games such…
The game Nofil is a two-player combinatorial game in which players take turns marking points of a design such that the set of marked points does not contain a block. Equivalently, we can think of the points as being deleted from the design…
This work contains the mathematical exploration of a few prototypical games in which central concepts from statistics and probability theory naturally emerge. The first two kinds of games are termed Fisher and Bayesian games, which are…
Clobber is an alternate-turn two-player game introduced in 2001 by Albert, Grossman, Nowakowski and Wolfe. The board is a graph with each node colored black (x), white (o), or empty (-). Player Left has black stones, player Right has white…
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…
Positional games are a well-studied class of combinatorial game. In their usual form, two players take turns to play moves in a set (`the board'), and certain subsets are designated as `winning': the first person to occupy such a set wins…
Given a finite set of positive integers, $A$, and starting with a heap of $n$ chips, Alice and Bob alternate turns and on each turn a player chooses $x\in A$ with $x$ smaller or equal than the current number of chips and subtract $x$ chips…
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 $b$…
Given a distribution of pebbles to the vertices of a graph, a pebbling move removes two pebbles from a single vertex and places a single pebble on an adjacent vertex. The pebbling number $\pi(G)$ is the smallest number such that, for any…
Pebble games were extensively studied in the 1970s and 1980s in a number of different contexts. The last decade has seen a revival of interest in pebble games coming from the field of proof complexity. Pebbling has proven to be a useful…