Pat Devlin, Swarthmore College

Paulina Trifonova, Swarthmore College

Abstract

In this talk, we discuss combinatorial games where both players move randomly (each turn, independently selecting a legal move uniformly at random), and we will emphasize the "experimental math" approach that was the backbone of our results. We provide closed-form expressions for the expected number of turns in a game of Chomp with any starting condition. We also derive and prove formulas for the win probabilities for any game of Chomp with at most two rows. Additionally, we completely analyze the game of nim under random play by finding the expected number of turns and win probabilities from any starting position. No familiarity with probability is required, as the talk quickly reduces to studying certain recurrence relations that naturally arise from each game.

Link to video: https://vimeo.com/1032745175?share=copy

Presented Via Zoom: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/91865817691

Password: 6564120420

For further information see: https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/expmath/