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Strong Positional Game
A strong positional game (also called Maker-Maker game) is a kind of positional game. Like most positional games, it is described by its set of ''positions'' (X) and its family of ''winning-sets'' (\mathcal- a family of subsets of X). It is played by two players, called First and Second, who alternately take previously-untaken positions. In a strong positional game, the winner is the first player who holds all the elements of a winning-set. If all positions are taken and no player wins, then it is a draw. Classic Tic-tac-toe is an example of a strong positional game. First player advantage In a strong positional game, Second cannot have a winning strategy. This can be proved by a strategy-stealing argument: if Second had a winning strategy, then First could have stolen it and win too, but this is impossible since there is only one winner. Therefore, for every strong-positional game there are only two options: either First has a winning strategy, or Second has a drawing strateg ... [...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] |
Family Of Sets
In set theory and related branches of mathematics, a collection F of subsets of a given set S is called a family of subsets of S, or a family of sets over S. More generally, a collection of any sets whatsoever is called a family of sets, set family, or a set system. The term "collection" is used here because, in some contexts, a family of sets may be allowed to contain repeated copies of any given member, and in other contexts it may form a proper class rather than a set. A finite family of subsets of a finite set S is also called a ''hypergraph''. The subject of extremal set theory concerns the largest and smallest examples of families of sets satisfying certain restrictions. Examples The set of all subsets of a given set S is called the power set of S and is denoted by \wp(S). The power set \wp(S) of a given set S is a family of sets over S. A subset of S having k elements is called a k-subset of S. The k-subsets S^ of a set S form a family of sets. Let S = \. An ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row is the winner. It is a solved game, with a forced draw assuming best play from both players. Gameplay Tic-tac-toe is played on a three-by-three grid by two players, who alternately place the marks X and O in one of the nine spaces in the grid. In the following example, the first player (''X'') wins the game in seven steps: There is no universally-agreed rule as to who plays first, but in this article the convention that X plays first is used. Players soon discover that the best play from both parties leads to a draw. Hence, tic-tac-toe is often played by young children who may not have discovered the optimal strategy. Because of the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategy-stealing Argument
In combinatorial game theory, the strategy-stealing argument is a general argument that shows, for many two-player games, that the second player cannot have a guaranteed winning strategy. The strategy-stealing argument applies to any symmetric game (one in which either player has the same set of available moves with the same results, so that the first player can "use" the second player's strategy) in which an extra move can never be a disadvantage. A key property of a strategy stealing argument is that it proves that the first player can win (or possibly draw) the game without actually constructing such a strategy. So, although it might tell you that there exists a winning strategy, the proof gives you no information about what that strategy is. The argument works by obtaining a contradiction. A winning strategy is assumed to exist for the second player, who is using it. But then, roughly speaking, after making an arbitrary first move – which by the conditions above is not a disa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
The Electronic Journal Of Combinatorics
The ''Electronic Journal of Combinatorics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in combinatorial mathematics. The journal was established in 1994 by Herbert Wilf (University of Pennsylvania) and Neil Calkin ( Georgia Institute of Technology). The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics is a founding member of the Free Journal Network. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the journal had a 2017 impact factor of 0.762. Editors-in-chief Current The current editors-in-chief are: * Maria Axenovich, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany * Miklós Bóna, University of Florida, United States * Julia Böttcher, London School of Economics, United Kingdom * Richard A. Brualdi, University of Wisconsin, Madison, United States * Eric Fusy, CNRS/LIX, École Polytechnique, France * Catherine Greenhill, UNSW Sydney, Australia * Brendan McKay, Australian National University, Australia * Bojan Mohar, Simon Fraser University, Canada * Marc Noy, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Complete Graph
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a complete graph is a simple undirected graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a unique edge. A complete digraph is a directed graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a pair of unique edges (one in each direction). Graph theory itself is typically dated as beginning with Leonhard Euler's 1736 work on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. However, drawings of complete graphs, with their vertices placed on the points of a regular polygon, had already appeared in the 13th century, in the work of Ramon Llull. Such a drawing is sometimes referred to as a mystic rose. Properties The complete graph on vertices is denoted by . Some sources claim that the letter in this notation stands for the German word , but the German name for a complete graph, , does not contain the letter , and other sources state that the notation honors the contributions of Kazimierz Kuratowski to graph theory. has edges (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clique (graph Theory)
In the mathematical area of graph theory, a clique ( or ) is a subset of vertices of an undirected graph such that every two distinct vertices in the clique are adjacent. That is, a clique of a graph G is an induced subgraph of G that is complete. Cliques are one of the basic concepts of graph theory and are used in many other mathematical problems and constructions on graphs. Cliques have also been studied in computer science: the task of finding whether there is a clique of a given size in a graph (the clique problem) is NP-complete, but despite this hardness result, many algorithms for finding cliques have been studied. Although the study of complete subgraphs goes back at least to the graph-theoretic reformulation of Ramsey theory by , the term ''clique'' comes from , who used complete subgraphs in social networks to model cliques of people; that is, groups of people all of whom know each other. Cliques have many other applications in the sciences and particularly in bioinf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramsey's Theorem
In combinatorics, Ramsey's theorem, in one of its graph-theoretic forms, states that one will find monochromatic cliques in any edge labelling (with colours) of a sufficiently large complete graph. To demonstrate the theorem for two colours (say, blue and red), let and be any two positive integers. Ramsey's theorem states that there exists a least positive integer for which every blue-red edge colouring of the complete graph on vertices contains a blue clique on vertices or a red clique on vertices. (Here signifies an integer that depends on both and .) Ramsey's theorem is a foundational result in combinatorics. The first version of this result was proved by F. P. Ramsey. This initiated the combinatorial theory now called Ramsey theory, that seeks regularity amid disorder: general conditions for the existence of substructures with regular properties. In this application it is a question of the existence of ''monochromatic subsets'', that is, subsets of connected edges of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hales–Jewett Theorem
In mathematics, the Hales–Jewett theorem is a fundamental combinatorial result of Ramsey theory named after Alfred W. Hales and Robert I. Jewett, concerning the degree to which high-dimensional objects must necessarily exhibit some combinatorial structure; it is impossible for such objects to be "completely random". An informal geometric statement of the theorem is that for any positive integers ''n'' and ''c'' there is a number ''H'' such that if the cells of a ''H''-dimensional ''n''×''n''×''n''×...×''n'' cube are colored with ''c'' colors, there must be one row, column, or certain diagonal (more details below) of length ''n'' all of whose cells are the same color. In other words, the higher-dimensional, multi-player, ''n''-in-a-row generalization of a game of tic-tac-toe cannot end in a draw, no matter how large ''n'' is, no matter how many people ''c'' are playing, and no matter which player plays each turn, provided only that it is played on a board of sufficiently high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
