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Stat155
Game Theory
Lecture 2: Combinatorial Games
Combinatorial games:
Positions, moves, terminal positions, impartial/partisan, progressively
bounded, directed graphs.
Progressively bounded impartial games.
The sets N and P.
Theorem: Someone can win.
Peter Bartlett
Examples
Subtraction
Chomp
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15 chips
Two players: I and II.
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Write N as the set of positions where the Next player to move can
guarantee a win, provided that they play optimally.
Write P as the set of positions where the other playerthe player that
moved Previouslycan guarantee a win, provided that they play optimally.
For x = 0?
0 P.
1, 2 N.
For x = 3?
3 P.
For x = 4?
4, 5 N.
For x = 5?
6 P.
For x = 6?
7, 8 N.
15 P.
For x = 15?
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Terminology:
An impartial game has the same set of legal moves for both players:
MI = MII .
A partisan game has different sets of legal moves for the players.
A terminal position for a player has no legal move to another position.
x is terminal for player I if there is no y X with (x, y ) MI .
Normal play: the player that cannot move loses the game.
Mis`ere play: the player that cannot move wins the game.
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Positions = nodes.
Moves = edges.
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Theorem
Acyclic graphs
... where all paths from a node have bounded length.
What is B(x)?
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(Recall: B(x) denotes the maximum number of moves before the game
ends.)
Thus, every x is in N P.
From any initial position, one of the players has a winning strategy.
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Example: Chomp
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Example: Chomp
Example: Chomp
Theorem
Every non-terminal rectangle is in N.
Which player?
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Example: Chomp
Example: Chomp
Why?
Because from a rectangle r X , there is a legal move (r , r 0 ) M
that we can always choose to skip, that is, for any move (r 0 , s) M,
we also have (r , s) M.
(What is this r 0 ?)
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