English

A convergence technique for the game i-Mark

Combinatorics 2025-04-01 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

The game of i-Mark is an impartial combinatorial game introduced by Sopena (2016). The game is parametrized by two sets of positive integers SS, DD, where minD2\min D\ge 2. From position n0n\ge 0 one can move to any position nsn-s, sSs\in S, as long as ns0n-s\ge 0, as well as to any position n/dn/d, dDd\in D, as long as n>0n>0 and dd divides nn. The game ends when no more moves are possible, and the last player to move is the winner. Sopena, and subsequently Friman and Nivasch (2021), characterized the Sprague-Grundy sequences of many cases of i-Mark(S,D)(S,D) with D=1|D|=1. Friman and Nivasch also obtained some partial results for the case i-Mark({1},{2,3})(\{1\},\{2,3\}). In this paper we present a convergence technique that gives polynomial-time algorithms for the Sprague-Grundy sequence of many instances of i-Mark with D>1|D|>1. In particular, we prove our technique works for all games i-Mark({1},{d1,d2})(\{1\},\{d_1,d_2\}). Keywords: Combinatorial game, impartial game, Sprague-Grundy function, convergence, dynamic programming.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.23196,
  title  = {A convergence technique for the game i-Mark},
  author = {Gabriel Nivasch and Oz Rubinstein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.23196},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 tables, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:39:10.166Z