Games of No Chance

Edited by Richard Nowakowski

Combinatorial games are finite, two-person, full-information games such as chess, checkers, go, domineering, dots-and-boxes, nim, and many others. This volume, arising from a workshop held at MSRI in July 1994, represents a significant addition to the literature of combinatorial games.

It includes expository articles by some of the masters in the field; studies of the classical games of chess and go from the point of view of combinatorial game theory; reports on computer advances such as the solution of nine-men morris and pentominoes; and new theoretical approaches, including extensions of the traditional framework to games with many players, or lacking perfect information, or involving loops. The book closes with an updated and commented list of unsolved problems by R. K. Guy and a comprehensive bibliography by A. Fraenkel.