Games at Dal 4
Many thanks to AARMS for their
support.
- What? Misere Games.
- Where? Room 319
Chase Building (Math and Stats Building).
- When? Monday 21
August to Friday 25 August, 2006.
- Who? The confirmed
participants are listed below. Everyone
is invited to the opening session which should give enough background
to those who may wish to join us for the week.
Combinatorial Games are two-player games, the players alternate moves
and there is no chance devices. Misere Games have the winning rule: The last player to make a move LOSES.
Combinatorial Games played under Normal play rules (The last player to make a move WINS)
form a partially ordered abelian group (starting with surreal numbers
and their extensions). None of this structure extends automatically to
Misere play. How to analyze misere games is a long outstanding question
with very few successes. In 2005 there was a breakthrough, Thane
Plambeck showed that by restricting the universe in which the games
would be played, a structure was discernible for impartial games (games in which
both players have the same moves available from every position). In
Normal play, the structure is essentially Z2 x Z2
x ... . In Misere play, Z2 is replaced by a
different group and the resulting structure is a monoid.There are many
unanswered questions as to what the groups can be and what the monoids
are. Only a small subset seem to occur.
The aim of the Workshop is to introduce these new techniques and
attempt to extend them to all misere games.
Timetable:
- Pre-Workshop: Friday 18 August---two
MSc defenses
- Meghan Allen 10am, Rm 319 Chase building---the approaches to
misere game analysis up to and including a brief introduction to
Plambecks' work.
- Fraser Stewart, 1:00pm, Rm 319 Chase building---a view of
some partizan misere games.
- Monday 9:30-12:30: Thane
Plambeck will give a leisurely tutorial on his methods.
- Monday 1:30-5:00: more
work on analyzing impartial games.
- Tuesday:
Distinguishing games born on Day 2.
- Wednesday: Misere
Games in general.
- Thursday: Misere
Games in general.
- Friday: wrap up
Confirmed Participants:
Dr. J.P Grossman, Dr. Richard Nowakowski (Organizer), Dr. Thane
Plambeck, Dr. David Wolfe ---- all are recognized experts in
combinatorial games;
Meghan Allen, Alan Hill, Neil McKay, Paul Ottaway, Fraser Stewart,
Angela Siegel.
Background papersFor those wishing to get a head
start:
misere-survey.pdf
see also my games page