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We introduce two new iteration games: the game G, which is a strengthening of the weak iteration game, and the game G+, which is somewhat stronger than G but weaker than the full iteration game of length omega_1. For a countable M…
A well-known chessboard problem is that of placing eight queens on the chessboard so that no two queens are able to attack each other. (Recall that a queen can attack anything on the same row, column, or diagonal as itself.) This problem is…
We consider average-energy games, where the goal is to minimize the long-run average of the accumulated energy. While several results have been obtained on these games recently, decidability of average-energy games with a lower-bound…
Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges and $D(G,x)$ the domination polynomial of $G$. In this paper we completely characterize the values of $n$ and $m$ for which optimal graphs exist for domination polynomials. We also show that…
We study a combinatorial game derived from a problem in the German National Mathematics Competition. In this game, two players take turns removing numbers from a finite set of natural numbers, aiming to satisfy a certain divisibility…
A famous result in game theory known as Zermelo's theorem says that "in chess either White can force a win, or Black can force a win, or both sides can force at least a draw". The present paper extends this result to the class of all…
We consider playing the game of Tic-Tac-Toe on block designs BIBD($v, k, \lambda$) and transversal designs TD($k, n$). Players take turns choosing points and the first player to complete a block wins the game. We show that triple systems,…
This paper is inspired by the PQ penny flip game. It employs group-theoretic concepts to study the original game and also its possible extensions. We show that the PQ penny flip game can be associated with the dihedral group $D_{8}$. We…
Maker-Breaker total domination game in graphs is introduced as a natural counterpart to the Maker-Breaker domination game recently studied by Duch\^ene, Gledel, Parreau, and Renault. Both games are instances of the combinatorial…
Poker is a family of card games that includes many variations. We hypothesize that most poker games can be solved as a pattern matching problem, and propose creating a strong poker playing system based on a unified poker representation. Our…
Consider a periodical (in two independent directions) tiling of the plane with polygons (faces). In this article we shall only give examples using squares, regular hexagons, equilateral triangles and parallelograms ("unions" of two…
We study different domination problems of attacking and non-attacking rooks and queens on polyominoes and polycubes of all dimensions. Our main result proves that maximum independent domination is NP-complete for non-attacking queens and…
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…
Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $n$. A dominating set of $G$ is a set $S$ of vertices of $G$ so that every vertex of $G$ is either in $S$ or adjacent to a vertex in $S$. The domination polynomial of $G$ is the polynomial…
In this paper we present a lower bound for the domination number of the Cartesian product of a path and a cycle, that is tight if the length of the cycle is a multiple of five. This bound improves the natural lower bound obtained by using…
Rock is wrapped by paper, paper is cut by scissors, and scissors are crushed by rock. This simple game is popular among children and adults to decide on trivial disputes that have no obvious winner, but cyclic dominance is also at the heart…
A $(p,q,r)$-board that has $pq+pr+qr$ squares consists of a $(p,q)$-, a $(p,r)$-, and a $(q,r)$-rectangle. Let $S$ be the set of the squares. Consider a bijection $f : S \to [1,pq+pr+qr]$. Firstly, for $1 \le i \le p$, let $x_i$ be the sum…
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.…
The domination polynomial of a graph is the polynomial whose coefficients count the number of dominating sets of each cardinality. A recent question asks which graphs are uniquely determined (up to isomorphism) by their domination…
We show that, in John Conway's board game Phutball (or Philosopher's Football), it is NP-complete to determine whether the current player has a move that immediately wins the game. In contrast, the similar problems of determining whether…