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Related papers: Taming the wild in impartial combinatorial games

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We survey recent developments in the theory of impartial combinatorial games in misere play, focusing on how the Sprague-Grundy theory of normal-play impartial games generalizes to misere play via the indistinguishability quotient…

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

We announce misere-play solutions to several previously-unsolved combinatorial games. The solutions are described in terms of misere quotients--commutative monoids that encode the additive structure of specific misere-play games. We also…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2008-06-30 Thane E. Plambeck , Aaron N. Siegel

In this paper, we will be proving mathematically that scoring play combinatorial game theory covers all combinatorial games. That is, there is a sub-set of scoring play games that are identical to the set of normal play games, and a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-03-19 Fraser Stewart

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

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

We present an algebraic framework for the analysis of combinatorial games. This framework embraces the classical theory of partizan games as well as a number of misere games, comply-constrain games, and card games that have been studied…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-12-03 Johan Wästlund

This thesis will be discussing scoring play combinatorial games and looking at the general structure of these games under different operators. I will also be looking at the Sprague-Grundy values for scoring play impartial games, and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-02-22 Fraser Stewart

A combinatorial game is a two-player game without hidden information or chance elements. The main object of combinatorial game theory is to obtain the outcome, which player has a winning strategy, of a given combinatorial game. Positions of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-27 Kengo Hashimoto

Combinatorial Game Theory is a branch of mathematics and theoretical computer science that studies sequential 2-player games with perfect information. Normal play is the convention where a player who cannot move loses. Here, we generalize…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Prem Kant , Urban Larsson , Ravi K. Rai , Akshay V. Upasany

The disjunctive sum of impartial games is analyzed by Sprague-Grundy theory. The theory has been extended to loopy games and entailing games by early results. In this study, we consider further extension of this theory and show partial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-04-02 Koki Suetsugu

Subtraction games have a rich literature as normal-play combinatorial games (e.g., Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy, 1982). Recently, the theory has been extended to zero-sum scoring play (Cohensius et al. 2019). Here, we take the approach of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-22 Anjali Bhagat , Tanmay Kulkarni , Urban Larsson , Divya Murali

In this paper, we formalize Sprague-Grundy theory for combinatorial games in bounded arithmetic. We show that in the presence of Sprague-Grundy numbers, a fairly weak axioms capture PSPACE.

Logic · Mathematics 2016-09-09 Satoru Kuroda

Past efforts to classify impartial three-player combinatorial games (the theories of Li and Straffin) have made various restrictive assumptions about the rationality of one's opponents and the formation and behavior of coalitions. One may…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 James Propp

In an impartial combinatorial game, both players have the same options in the game and all its subpositions. The classical Sprague-Grundy Theory was developed for short impartial games, where players have a finite number of options, there…

Playing impartial games under the normal and misere conventions may differ a lot. However, there are also many "exceptions" for which the normal and misere plays are very similar. As early as in 1901 Bouton noticed that this is the case…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-05-23 Vladimir Gurvich , Nhan Bao Ho

Consider tuples of separable algebras over a common local or global number field, related to each other by specified resolvent constructions. Under the assumption that all ramification is tame, simple group-theoretic calculations give best…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2016-01-20 John W. Jones , David P. Roberts

We encode arbitrary finite impartial combinatorial games in terms of lattice points in rational convex polyhedra. Encodings provided by these \emph{lattice games} can be made particularly efficient for octal games, which we generalize to…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-08-25 Alan Guo , Ezra Miller

We define a two-player combinatorial game in which players take alternate turns; each turn consists on deleting a vertex of a graph, together with all the edges containing such vertex. If any vertex became isolated by a player's move then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-08-03 Richard Adams , Janae Dixon , Jennifer Elder , Jamie Peabody , Oscar Vega , Karen Willis

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

In this paper, we analyze the mis\`ere versions of two impartial combinatorial games: k-Bounded Greedy Nim and Greedy Nim. We present a complete solution to both games by showing necessary and sufficient conditions for a position to be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Nanako Omiya , Ryo Yoshinaka , Ayumi Shinohara
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