CS 699 | Summer 2023

Reading Group on Combinatorial and Computational Aspects of Games

Summer 2023

About the Course

We are going to play some games! Here are some typical questions we will explore:

• Who is going to win assuming optimal play?
• What is the complexity of determining the winner (or a winning strategy) given the rules of a game?

If you are curious about how this typically goes, start with the excellent talks here and here.

If you want to play: here’s Subtraction, and here’s Sim.

This is an informal summer reading group.

Target Audience

You will find this course interesting if:

• you enjoy playing games,
• you enjoy logic puzzles like this one or probability puzzles like this one, or
• you like box-stacking challenges.

Prerequisites

This course is self-contained and involves no pre-requisites.

References

1. Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, the classic book that is an amazing ride through all parts of CGT.
2. Lessons in Play, an excellent text for upper level undergrads and grad students in math.
3. Combinatorial Game Theory, a great text for advanced mathematicians.
4. Playing with Discrete Math. This text is appropriate for undergrads who may or may not be math majors.
5. Games, puzzles and computation. This text, based on the thesis of Robert A. Hearn, explores computational aspects of games.
6. Is NP-hard, a compendium of games with a lot of information about their complexity status.
7. Math Games with Bad Drawings, another compendium of games, with — as the title suggestions — bad drawings and lots of trivia.

Note. The descriptions for the first four books are borrowed from the Sprouts 2023 website.

Timings and Venue

• Venue: Online
• Lectures: Everyday at 11AM

Note: We stopped recording after a couple of weeks, however, the topics pursued are listed for the record :) Some initial notes — to be developed further — are here. The handwritten slides from the videos are not currently available.