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Maker-breaker Game
A Maker-Breaker game is a kind of positional game. Like most positional games, it is described by its set of ''positions/points/elements'' (X) and its family of ''winning-sets'' (\mathcal- a family of subsets of X). It is played by two players, called Maker and Breaker, who alternately take previously-untaken elements. In a Maker-Breaker game, Maker wins if he manages to hold all the elements of a winning-set, while Breaker wins if he manages to prevent this, i.e. to hold at least one element in each winning-set. Draws are not possible. In each Maker-Breaker game, either Maker or Breaker has a winning strategy. The main research question about these games is which of these two options holds. Examples A classic Maker-Breaker game is Hex. There, the winning-sets are all paths from the left side of the board to the right side. Maker wins by owning a connected path; Breaker wins by owning a connected path from top to bottom, since it blocks all connected paths from left to right. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positional Game
A positional game is a kind of a combinatorial game for two players. It is described by: *Xa finite set of elements. Often ''X'' is called the ''board'' and its elements are called ''positions''. *\mathcala family of subsets of X. These subsets are usually called the ''winning-sets''. * A criterion for winning the game. During the game, players alternately claim previously-unclaimed positions, until one of the players wins. If all positions in X are taken while no player wins, the game is considered a draw. The classic example of a positional game is Tic-tac-toe. In it, X contains the 9 squares of the game-board, \mathcal contains the 8 lines that determine a victory (3 horizontal, 3 vertical and 2 diagonal), and the winning criterion is: the first player who holds an entire winning-set wins. Other examples of positional games are Hex and the Shannon switching game. For every positional game there are exactly three options: either the first player has a winning strategy, or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Selfridge
John Lewis Selfridge (February 17, 1927 – October 31, 2010), was an American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics. Education Selfridge received his Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of California, Los Angeles under the supervision of Theodore Motzkin. Career Selfridge served on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northern Illinois University from 1971 to 1991 (retirement), chairing the Department of Mathematical Sciences 1972–1976 and 1986–1990. He was executive editor of Mathematical Reviews from 1978 to 1986, overseeing the computerization of its operations. He was a founder of the Number Theory Foundation, which has named its Selfridge prize in his honour. Research In 1962, he proved that 78,557 is a Sierpinski number; he showed that, when ''k'' = 78,557, all numbers of the form ''k''2''n'' + 1 have a factor in the covering set . Five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biased Positional Game
A biased positional game is a variant of a positional game. Like most positional games, it is described by a set of ''positions/points/elements'' (X) and a family of subsets (\mathcal), which are usually called the ''winning-sets''. It is played by two players who take turns picking elements until all elements are taken. While in the standard game each player picks one element per turn, in the biased game each player takes a different number of elements. More formally, for every two positive integers ''p'' and ''q'', a (p:q)-positional game is a game in which the first player picks ''p'' elements per turn and the second player picks ''q'' elements per turn. The main question of interest regarding biased positional games is what is their ''threshold bias'' - what is the bias in which the winning-power switches from one player to the other player. Example As an example, consider the ''triangle game''. In this game, the elements are all edges of a complete graph on ''n'' vertices, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |