Related papers: Random-Turn Hex and other selection games
Hex is a well known connection game in which two players attempt to connect opposite sides of the board by colored stones. In 2022, Hamkins and Leonessi introduced an infinite version, in which the goal is to construct a certain kind of…
We introduce the game of infinite Hex, extending the familiar finite game to natural play on the infinite hexagonal lattice. Whereas the finite game is a win for the first player, we prove in contrast that infinite Hex is a draw -- both…
In the paper it is proven that the two-players turn-based stochastic game "Risk or Safety" has a unique solution. Both players need to play the same strategy if they want to maximize their winning chances. An analytical method based on the…
We consider random-turn positional games, introduced by Peres, Schramm, Sheffield and Wilson in 2007. A $p$-random-turn positional game is a two-player game, played the same as an ordinary positional game, except that instead of alternating…
Each of two players, by turns, rolls a dice several times accumulating the successive scores until he decides to stop, or he rolls an ace. When stopping, the accumulated turn score is added to the player account and the dice is given to his…
DeepMind's recent spectacular success in using deep convolutional neural nets and machine learning to build superhuman level agents --- e.g. for Atari games via deep Q-learning and for the game of Go via Reinforcement Learning --- raises…
Rex, short for Reverse Hex, is a set coloring game in which players try to avoid connecting terminals of their color. Combinatorial game theory (CGT) is the study of perfect strategy games. Until recently, both Rex and Hex were not examined…
We develop a theory of combinatorial games that is appropriate for describing positions in Hex and other monotone set coloring games. We consider two natural conditions on such games: a game is monotone if all moves available to both…
We study the complexity of solving two-player infinite duration games played on a fixed finite graph, where the control of a node is not predetermined but rather assigned randomly. In classic random-turn games, control of each node is…
We present a Monte Carlo algorithm for efficiently finding near optimal moves and bids in the game of Bidding Hex. The algorithm is based on the recent solution of Random-Turn Hex by Peres, Schramm, Sheffield, and Wilson together with…
We analyze a two-player game in which players take turns avoiding the selection of certain points within a convex geometry. The objective is to prevent the convex closure of all chosen points from encompassing a predefined set. The first…
In the game of Matching Pennies, Alice and Bob each hold a penny, and at every tick of the clock they simultaneously display the head or the tail sides of their coins. If they both display the same side, then Alice wins Bob's penny; if they…
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…
We consider a two-player search game on a tree $T$. One vertex (unknown to the players) is randomly selected as the target. The players alternately guess vertices. If a guess $v$ is not the target, then both players are informed in which…
We consider a two-player game in which the first player (the Guesser) tries to guess, edge-by-edge, the path that second player (the Chooser) takes through a directed graph. At each step, the Guesser makes a wager as to the correctness of…
In his list of open problems, Martin Erickson described a certain game: "Two players alternately put queens on an n x n chess board so that each new queen is not in range of any queen already on the board (the color of the queens is…
We study a random game in which two players in turn play a fixed number of moves. For each move, there are two possible choices. To each possible outcome of the game we assign a winner in an i.i.d. fashion with a fixed parameter p. In the…
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…
The online Ramsey turnaround game is a game between two players, Builder and Painter, on a board of $n$ vertices using $3$ colors, for a fixed graph $H$ on at most $n$ vertices. The goal of Painter is to force a monochromatic copy of $H$,…
N players are randomly fitted with a colored hat (q different colors). All players guess simultaneously the color of their own hat observing only the hat colors of the other N-1 players. The team wins if all players guess right. No…