Is Nine-Men's Morris, in the hands of perfect players, a win for white or for black--or a draw? Can king, rook, and knight always defeat king and two knights in chess? What can Go players learn from economists? What are nimbers, tinies, switches, minies? This book deals with combinatorial games, that is, games not involving chance or hidden information. Their study is at once old and young: though some games, such as chess, have been analyzed for centuries, the first full analysis of a nontrivial combinatorial game (Nim) only appeared in 1902. This book deals with combinatorial games, that...

Is Nine-Men's Morris, in the hands of perfect players, a win for white or for black--or a draw? Can king, rook, and knight always defeat king and two knights in chess? What can Go players learn from economists? What are nimbers, tinies, switches, minies? This book deals with combinatorial games, that is, games not involving chance or hidden information. Their study is at once old and young: though some games, such as chess, have been analyzed for centuries, the first full analysis of a nontrivial combinatorial game (Nim) only appeared in 1902. This book deals with combinatorial games, that...

This book is a state-of-the-art look at combinatorial games, that is, games not involving chance or hidden information. It contains a fascinating collection of articles by some of the top names in the field, such as Elwyn Berlekamp and John Conway, plus other researchers in mathematics and computer science, together with some top game players. The articles run the gamut from new theoretical approaches (infinite games, generalizations of game values, 2-player cellular automata, Alpha-Beta pruning under partial orders) to the very latest in some of the hottest games (Amazons, Chomp,...

Presents the mathematical structure of old games and new: Hex, Go, Toppling Dominoes, Maze, plus a tutorial on analysing misere games.