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12 votes
0 answers
495 views

Connection properties of a single stone on an infinite Hex board

This includes a series of questions. One of the most typical examples is shown as the picture below. An half-infinite Hex board with an one row of black stones. Black stones are separated by one ...
4 votes
1 answer
432 views

"Infinity": A card game based on prime factorization and a question

I have been developing a card game called "Infinity", which involves a unique play mechanic based on card interactions. In this game, each card displays a set of symbols, and players match ...
1 vote
0 answers
132 views

Are gaps and loopy games interchangeable in the Surreal Numbers?

The class of surreal numbers (commonly called $No$) is not complete: it contains gaps. Some people have studied the "Dedekind completion" of the surreal numbers in order to do limits and ...
67 votes
5 answers
10k views

Decidability of chess on an infinite board

The recent question Do there exist chess positions that require exponentially many moves to reach? of Tim Chow reminds me of a problem I have been interested in. Is chess with finitely many men on an ...
128 votes
13 answers
24k views

Checkmate in $\omega$ moves?

Is there a chess position with a finite number of pieces on the infinite chess board $\mathbb{Z}^2$ such that White to move has a forced win, but Black can stave off mate for at least $n$ moves for ...
24 votes
2 answers
1k views

What is the complexity of the winning condition in infinite Hex? In particular, is infinite Hex a Borel game?

Consider the game of infinite Hex, where two players Red and Blue alternately place their stones on the infinite hex grid, each aiming to create a winning configuration. Red wins after infinite play, ...
41 votes
3 answers
4k views

A game on integers

$A$ and $B$ take turns to pick integers: $A$ picks one integer and then $B$ picks $k > 1$ integers ($k$ being fixed). A player cannot pick a number that his opponent has picked. If $A$ has $5$ ...
28 votes
7 answers
6k views

Why is game theory formulated in terms of equilibrium instead of winning strategies?

Game theory, on the outset, seems to invite the questions, "what can I do to win" or "how do I beat my opponent?" So many people who are not familiar with game theory look to game ...
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

The Sudoku game: Solver-Spoiler variation

Consider the Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game, a natural variation of the Sudoku game recently appearing in the question Who wins two-player Sudoku? posted by user PyRulez. In that game, the players attempt ...
25 votes
4 answers
2k views

The Chocolatier's game: can the Glutton win with a restricted form of strategy?

I have a question about the Chocolatier's game, which I had introduced in my recent answer to a question of Richard Stanley. To recap the game quickly, the Chocolatier offers up at each stage a finite ...
4 votes
0 answers
165 views

Infinite positions in 3D chomp

I've recently come back to investigating ordinal chomp. See A winning move for the first player in $3 \times 3 \times \omega$ Ordinal Chomp for a definition. I made a new discovery, that the position \...
28 votes
2 answers
1k views

Solution to simple mathematical game

Consider the following game (that I made up). Two players each attempt to name a target number. The first player begins by naming 1. On each subsequent turn, a player can name any larger number that ...
1 vote
0 answers
96 views

Is there a well-posed definition of game on a graph? Or a well defined category of games on graphs?

All I ever found about this were natural language rules à la Asimov's three laws of robotics. The questions are straightforward questions: 1) Is there a well-posed mathematical definition of game on ...
47 votes
3 answers
5k views

Does knight behave like a king in his infinite odyssey?

The Knight's Tour is a well-known mathematical chess problem. There is an extensive amount of research concerning this question in two/higher dimensional finite boards. Here, I would like to tackle ...
9 votes
1 answer
460 views

Infinite-dimensional hex

Suppose $n$ players take turns selecting vertices of the grid $[k]^n = \left\{0, 1, 2, \ldots, k-1\right\}^n$. Each player is assigned a pair of opposite faces of the grid, and wins the game if they ...
7 votes
2 answers
671 views

Determinacy of (infinite, possibly loopy) combinatorial games

I am looking for references and hopefully enlightening proofs of the following statement(s) concerning the determinacy of not-necessarily-well-founded (i.e., possibly infinite, possibly loopy) ...
0 votes
1 answer
495 views

Infinite board games: sentences about

As a unified approach if we have an ( read any) infinite board game described as $\mathcal{G}$ using a particular axiom set A.. can a sentence be devised in A which automatically answers the basic ...
2 votes
2 answers
320 views

How to describe the common boundaries between regions in a infinite Sudoku?

This relates to the answer to a question "Who wins two player sudoku?" and this awesome blog. A Sudoku can be $N \times N$ where $\sqrt{N}$ is a natural number because $N \times N / \sqrt{N} \times \...
13 votes
1 answer
3k views

The infinite X in Conway's game of life

In Conway's game of life, take the initial position to be two infinite diagonal lines of live cells, with a single cell in common. Does this thing converge to a stable configuration? I.e., is the ...
33 votes
1 answer
3k views

Is there a position in infinite Go for which the life of a particular stone has transfinite game value?

As follow up to Checkmate in $\omega$ moves?, we can ask the same question about go. Is there a position on a $\mathbb Z \times \mathbb Z$ goban such that either black can kill a white group, but ...
9 votes
2 answers
691 views

Choosing subsets of $\mathbb R$ of cardinality $\frak c$, who wins?

Consider the following infinite game: two players, I and II, are alternating and choosing a descending sequence of subsets of $\mathbb R$ of cardinality $\frak c$, so I chooses a set $A_1\subseteq\...
19 votes
3 answers
1k views

The arithmetic progression game and its variations: can you find optimal play?

Consider the arithmetic progression game, a two-player game of perfect information, in which the players take turns playing natural numbers, or finite sets of natural numbers, all distinct, and the ...