In this thesis we present the combinatorial game theory of the game Rex+. Rex+ is a variant of the game Hex, played on a four sided board made out of hexagons. Both players take turns placing as many stones of their colour as they would like on the board, with the objective being to force the other player to connect their two sides. We describe a new ordering, and present some preliminary results on it.
In Combinatorial Game Theory, the fundamental relation of game equivalence, denoted by $=$, is introduced early on and overrides the notion of set equality. We explore what happens if set equality is given its due before game equivalence is introduced.
Genetic programming is the practice of evolving formulas using crossover and mutation of genes representing functional operations. Motivated by genetic evolution we develop and solve two combinatorial games, and we demonstrate some advantages and pitfalls of using genetic programming to investigate Grundy values. We conclude by investigating a combinatorial game whose ruleset and starting positions are inspired by genetic structures.
We define a natural equivalence relation on collections of cards from the card game SET, and enumerate some of the equivalence classes, vastly generalizing the standard game. On this basis, we describe several alternative games for the SET deck, including the game of STUN, in which the goal is to find three cards with exactly two values in each attribute.
This paper studies a single-suit version of the card game War on a finite deck of cards. There are varying methods of how players put the cards that they win back into their hands, but we primarily consider randomly putting the cards back and deterministically always putting the winning card before the losing card. The concept of a \emph{passthrough} is defined, which refers to a player playing through all cards in their hand from a particular point in the game. We consider games in which the second player wins during their first passthrough. We introduce several combinatorial objects related …
The $\mathscr{P}$-position sets of some combinatorial games have special combinatorial structures. For example, the $\mathscr{P}$-position set of the hexad game, first investigated by Conway and Ryba, is the block set of the Steiner system $S(5, 6, 12)$ in the shuffle numbering, $\mathcal{D}_{\text{sh}}$. There were, however, few known games related to Steiner systems like the hexad game. For a given Steiner system, we construct a game whose $\mathscr{P}$-position set is its block set. By using constructed games, we obtain the following two results. First, we characterize $\mathcal{D}_{\text{s…
In a Take-Away Game on hypergraphs, two players take turns to remove the vertices and the hyperedges of the hypergraphs. In each turn, a player must remove either a single vertex or a hyperedge. When a player chooses to remove one vertex, all of the hyperedges that contain the chosen vertex are also removed. When a player chooses to remove one hyperedge, only that chosen hyperedge is removed. Whoever removes the last vertex wins the game. Following from the winning strategy for the Take-Away Impartial Combinatorial Games on only Oddly Uniform or only Evenly Uniform Hypergraphs, this paper is a…
We develop a theory of combinatorial games that is appropriate for describing positions in Hex and other monotone set coloring games. We consider two natural conditions on such games: a game is monotone if all moves available to both players are good, and passable if in each position, at least one player has at least one good move available. The latter condition is equivalent to saying that if passing were permitted, no player would benefit from passing. Clearly every monotone game is passable, and we prove that the converse holds up to equivalence of games. We give some examples of how this t…
We propose a unifying additive theory for standard conventions in Combinatorial Game Theory, including normal-, misère- and scoring-play, studied by Berlekamp, Conway, Dorbec, Ettinger, Guy, Larsson, Milley, Neto, Nowakowski, Renault, Santos, Siegel, Sopena, Stewart (1976-2019), and others. A game {\em universe} is a set of games that satisfies some standard closure properties. Here, we reveal when the fundamental game comparison problem, ``Is $G\su H$?'', simplifies to a constructive `local' solution, which generalizes Conway's foundational result in ONAG (1976) for normal-play games. This ha…
We consider three variants of a partisan combinatorial game between two players, Left and Right, played on an undirected simple graph. Left is able to delete vertices (and incident edges) while Right is able to delete edges. This natural extension of a similar impartial game gives a clear advantage to one player by allowing them the ability to play on a small subgraph which the other player can not. Our last variant removes this advantage by assuming a move is valid for one player if and only if the other player has a valid move on the same graph. In this case, we show that the ability to remo…
We introduce a one-person game that we call Padlock Solitaire which resembles the well-known clock solitaire card game. Analyzing variants of this game we obtain simple proofs of some classical results of combinatorics including ballot theorems and the enumeration of spanning trees in various graphs and hypergraphs.
Combinatorial games are two-player games of pure strategy where the players, usually called Left and Right, move alternately. In this paper, we introduce Cheating Robot games. These arise from simultaneous-play combinatorial games where one player has insider information ('cheats'). Play occurs in rounds. At the beginning of a round, both players know the moves that are available to them. Left chooses a move. Knowing Left's move, Right then chooses a move. Right's move is not constrained by Left's choice. The round is not completed until both players have made a choice. A game is finished only…
We define an all-small ruleset, Bipass, within the framework of normal-play combinatorial games. A game is played on finite strips of black and white stones. Stones of different colors are swapped provided they do not bypass one of their own kind. We find a surjective function from the strips to integer atomic weights (Berlekamp, Conway and Guy 1982) that measures the number of units in all-small games. This result provides explicit winning strategies for many games, and in cases where it does not, it gives narrow bounds for the canonical form game values. We prove that the game value *2 does …
