Related papers: Diagonal Peg Solitaire
We prove a recent conjecture of Duch\^ene and Rigo, stating that every complementary pair of homogeneous Beatty sequences represents the solution to an \emph{invariant} impartial game. Here invariance means that each available move in a…
In this work we address a game theoretic variant of the shortest path problem, in which two decision makers (players) move together along the edges of a graph from a given starting vertex to a given destination. The two players take turns…
We consider one-round games between a classical referee and two players. One of the main questions in this area is the parallel repetition question: Is there a way to decrease the maximum winning probability of a game without increasing the…
Cooperative games with nonempty core are called balanced, and the set of balanced games is a polyhedron. Given a game with empty core, we look for the closest balanced game, in the sense of the (weighted) Euclidean distance, i.e., the…
A {\em simple drawing} $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is one where each pair of edges share at most one point: either a common endpoint or a proper crossing. An edge $e$ in the complement of $G$ can be {\em inserted} into $D(G)$ if there exists a…
Given a graph $G$ we consider sequentially placing dimers on it, namely choosing a maximal independent subset of edges, i.e. edges that do not share common vertices. We study the number of vertices that do not belong to any edge found in…
We prove PSPACE-completeness of two classic types of Chess problems when generalized to n-by-n boards. A "retrograde" problem asks whether it is possible for a position to be reached from a natural starting position, i.e., whether the…
We introduce a generalization of "Solo Chess", a single-player variant of the game that can be played on chess.com. The standard version of the game is played on a regular 8 x 8 chessboard by a single player, with only white pieces, using…
We will describe a combinatorial game that models the problem of resolution of singularities of algebraic varieties over a field of characteristic zero. By giving a winning strategy for this game, we give another proof of the existence of…
We introduce the following variant of the Gale-Berlekamp switching game. Let $P$ be a set of n noncollinear points in the plane, each of them having weight $+1$ or $-1$. At each step, we pick a line $\ell$ passing through at least two…
A 5x5 board is the smallest board on which one can set up all kind of chess pieces as a start position. We consider Gardner's minichess variant in which all pieces are set as in a standard chessboard (from Rook to King). This game has…
In this paper we introduce and study {\em all-pay bidding games}, a class of two player, zero-sum games on graphs. The game proceeds as follows. We place a token on some vertex in the graph and assign budgets to the two players. Each turn,…
The solitaire army is a one-person peg jumping game where a player attempts to advance an "army" of pegs as far as possible into empty territory. The game was introduced by John Conway and is also known as "Conway's Soldiers". We consider…
Simple drawings of graphs are those in which each pair of edges share at most one point, either a common endpoint or a proper crossing. In this paper we study the problem of extending a simple drawing $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ by inserting a…
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 analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…
In this paper, we considered impartial games on a simplicial complex. Each vertex of a given simplicial complex acts as a position of an impartial game. Each player in turn chooses a face of the simplicial complex and, for each position on…
In 1979, David Fabian found a complete game of two-person Chinese Checkers in 30 moves (15 by each player) [Martin Gardner, Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers, MAA, 1997]. This solution requires that the two players cooperate to generate a…
In this paper a relationship is established between the domination game and minimal edge cuts. It is proved that the game domination number of a connected graph can be bounded above in terms of the size of minimal edge cuts. In particular,…
We give very simple algorithms for best play in the simplest kind of Dots & Boxes endgames: those that consist entirely of loops and long chains. In every such endgame we compute the margin of victory, assuming both players maximize the…