7 Search Results for "Rümmele, Stefan"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.5
Token Positional Games

Authors: Guillaume Bagan, Quentin Deschamps, Florian Galliot, Mirjana Mikalački, and Nacim Oijid

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 366, 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)

Abstract
The classical Maker-Breaker positional game is played on a board which is a hypergraph ℋ, with two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claiming vertices of ℋ until all the vertices are claimed. When the game ends, Maker wins if she has claimed all the vertices of some edge of ℋ; otherwise, Breaker wins. Playing this game in real life can be done by placing tokens on the vertices of the board. In this paper, we study the unfortunate case in which one or both players do not have enough tokens to cover all the vertices and, as such, will have to move their tokens around at some point instead of placing new ones. There may be a bias, in that Maker and Breaker do not necessarily have the same amount of tokens. The present paper initiates the study of this generalization of positional games, called token positional games. A particularly interesting case is when Maker has a winning strategy in the classical game: what is the lowest number of tokens with which she still wins against Breaker’s unlimited stock? We notably show that, for k-uniform hypergraphs on an arbitrarily large number n of vertices, this number equals k if k ∈ {2,3} but can vary from k to Ω(n) if k ≥ 4. From an algorithmic point of view, PSPACE-hardness in general is inherited from classical positional games, but we get a polynomial-time algorithm to solve the case where Breaker only has one token. We also establish EXPTIME-completeness for a "token sliding" variation of the game.
Cite as

Guillaume Bagan, Quentin Deschamps, Florian Galliot, Mirjana Mikalački, and Nacim Oijid. Token Positional Games. In 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 366, pp. 5:1-5:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bagan_et_al:LIPIcs.FUN.2026.5,
  author =	{Bagan, Guillaume and Deschamps, Quentin and Galliot, Florian and Mikala\v{c}ki, Mirjana and Oijid, Nacim},
  title =	{{Token Positional Games}},
  booktitle =	{13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-417-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{366},
  editor =	{Iacono, John},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-257240},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: positional games, token games, hypergraphs, algorithmic complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.24
On the Complexity of the Maker-Breaker Happy Vertex Game

Authors: Mathieu Hilaire, Perig Montfort, and Nacim Oijid

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 366, 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)

Abstract
Given a c-colored graph G, a vertex v of G is said to be happy if it has the same color as all its neighbors. The notion of happy vertices was introduced by Zhang and Li [Peng Zhang and Angsheng Li, 2015] to compute the homophily of a graph. Eto, Fujimoto, Kiya, Matsushita, Miyano, Murao and Saitoh [Hiroshi Eto et al., 2025] introduced the Maker-Maker version of the Happy vertex game, where two players compete to claim more happy vertices than their opponent. We introduce here the Maker-Breaker happy vertex game: two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately color the vertices of a graph with their respective colors. Maker aims to maximize the number of happy vertices at the end, while Breaker aims to prevent her. This game is also a scoring version of the Maker-Breaker domination game introduced by Duchene, Gledel, Parreau and Renault [Duchene et al., 2020], as a happy vertex corresponds exactly to a vertex that is not dominated in the domination game. Therefore, this game is a very natural game on graphs and can be studied within the scope of scoring positional games [Bagan et al., 2024]. We initiate here the complexity study of this game, by proving that computing its score is PSPACE-complete on trees, NP-hard on caterpillars, and polynomial on subdivided stars. Finally, we provide the exact value of the score on graphs of maximum degree 2, and we provide an FPT-algorithm to compute the score on graphs of bounded neighborhood diversity. An important contribution of the paper is that, to achieve our hardness results, we introduce a new type of incidence graph called the literal-clause incidence graph for 2-SAT formulas. We prove that QMAX 2-SAT remains PSPACE-complete even if this graph is acyclic, and that MAX 2-SAT remains NP-complete, even if this graph is acyclic and has maximum degree 2, i.e. is a union of paths. We demonstrate the importance of this contribution by proving that Incidence, the scoring positional game played on a graph is also PSPACE-complete when restricted to forests.
Cite as

Mathieu Hilaire, Perig Montfort, and Nacim Oijid. On the Complexity of the Maker-Breaker Happy Vertex Game. In 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 366, pp. 24:1-24:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{hilaire_et_al:LIPIcs.FUN.2026.24,
  author =	{Hilaire, Mathieu and Montfort, Perig and Oijid, Nacim},
  title =	{{On the Complexity of the Maker-Breaker Happy Vertex Game}},
  booktitle =	{13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-417-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{366},
  editor =	{Iacono, John},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-257434},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: Maker-Breaker game, Domination game, happy vertex game, scoring game, complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.32
Fantastic Flips and Where to Find Them: A General Framework for Parameterized Local Search on Partitioning Problems

Authors: Niels Grüttemeier, Nils Morawietz, and Frank Sommer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 349, 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)

Abstract
Parameterized local search combines classic local search heuristics with the paradigm of parameterized algorithmics. While most local search algorithms aim to improve given solutions by performing one single operation on a given solution, the parameterized approach aims to improve a solution by performing k simultaneous operations. Herein, k is a parameter called search radius for which the value can be chosen by a user. One major goal in the field of parameterized local search is to outline the trade-off between the size of k and the running time of the local search step. In this work, we introduce an abstract framework that generalizes natural parameterized local search approaches for a large class of partitioning problems: Given n items that are partitioned into b bins and a target function that evaluates the quality of the current partition, one asks whether it is possible to improve the solution by removing up to k items from their current bins and reassigning them to other bins. Among others, our framework applies for the local search versions of problems like Cluster Editing, Vector Bin Packing, and Nash Social Welfare. Motivated by a real-world application of the problem Vector Bin Packing, we introduce a parameter called number of types τ ≤ n and show that all problems fitting in our framework can be solved in τ^k ⋅ 2^𝒪(k) ⋅ |I|^𝒪(1) time, where |I| denotes the total input size. In case of Cluster Editing, the parameter τ generalizes the well-known parameter neighborhood diversity of the input graph. We complement these algorithms by showing that for all considered problems, an algorithm significantly improving over our algorithm with running time τ^k ⋅ 2^𝒪(k) ⋅ |I|^𝒪(1) would contradict the Exponential Time Hypothesis. Additionally, we show that even on very restricted instances, all considered problems are W[1]-hard when parameterized by the search radius k alone. In case of the local search version of Vector Bin Packing, we provide an even stronger W[1]-hardness result.
Cite as

Niels Grüttemeier, Nils Morawietz, and Frank Sommer. Fantastic Flips and Where to Find Them: A General Framework for Parameterized Local Search on Partitioning Problems. In 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 349, pp. 32:1-32:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{gruttemeier_et_al:LIPIcs.WADS.2025.32,
  author =	{Gr\"{u}ttemeier, Niels and Morawietz, Nils and Sommer, Frank},
  title =	{{Fantastic Flips and Where to Find Them: A General Framework for Parameterized Local Search on Partitioning Problems}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)},
  pages =	{32:1--32:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-398-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{349},
  editor =	{Morin, Pat and Oh, Eunjin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.32},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-242631},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.32},
  annote =	{Keywords: Flip-Neighborhood, Cluster Editing, Vector Bin Packing, Vertex Cover, NP-hard problem, Max c-Cut}
}
Document
Track A: Algorithms, Complexity and Games
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.89
On the Complexity of Client-Waiter and Waiter-Client Games

Authors: Valentin Gledel, Nacim Oijid, Sébastien Tavenas, and Stéphan Thomassé

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 334, 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)

Abstract
Positional games were introduced by Hales and Jewett in 1963, and their study became more popular when Erdős and Selfridge showed their connection to Ramsey theory and hypergraph coloring in 1973. Several conventions of these games exist, and the most popular one, Maker-Breaker was proved to be PSPACE-complete by Schaefer in 1978. The study of their complexity then stopped for decades, until 2017 when Bonnet, Jamain, and Saffidine proved that Maker-Breaker is W[1]-complete when parameterized by the number of moves. The study was then intensified when Rahman and Watson improved Schaefer’s result in 2021 by proving that the PSPACE-hardness holds for 6-uniform hypergraphs. More recently, Galliot, Gravier, and Sivignon proved that computing the winner on rank 3 hypergraphs is in P, and Keopke proved that the PSPACE-hardness also holds for 5-uniform hypergraphs. We focus here on the Client-Waiter and the Waiter-Client conventions. Both were proved to be NP-hard by Csernenszky, Martin, and Pluhár in 2011, but neither completeness nor positive results were known. In this paper, we complete the study of these conventions by proving that the former is PSPACE-complete, even restricted to 6-uniform hypergraphs, and by providing an FPT-algorithm for the latter, parameterized by the size of its largest edge. In particular, the winner of Waiter-Client can be computed in polynomial time in rank k hypergraphs for any fixed integer k. Finally, in search of the exact location of the complexity gap in the Client-Waiter convention, we focus on rank 3 hypergraphs. We provide an algorithm that runs in polynomial time with an oracle in NP.
Cite as

Valentin Gledel, Nacim Oijid, Sébastien Tavenas, and Stéphan Thomassé. On the Complexity of Client-Waiter and Waiter-Client Games. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 89:1-89:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{gledel_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.89,
  author =	{Gledel, Valentin and Oijid, Nacim and Tavenas, S\'{e}bastien and Thomass\'{e}, St\'{e}phan},
  title =	{{On the Complexity of Client-Waiter and Waiter-Client Games}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{89:1--89:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-372-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{334},
  editor =	{Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.89},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-234666},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.89},
  annote =	{Keywords: Complexity, positional games, Maker-Breaker, Client-Waiter, Waiter-Client, PSPACE-complete, FPT}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2017.37
Barrier Coverage with Non-uniform Lengths to Minimize Aggregate Movements

Authors: Serge Gaspers, Joachim Gudmundsson, Julián Mestre, and Stefan Rümmele

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 92, 28th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2017)

Abstract
Given a line segment I=[0,L], the so-called barrier, and a set of n sensors with varying ranges positioned on the line containing I, the barrier coverage problem is to move the sensors so that they cover I, while minimising the total movement. In the case when all the sensors have the same radius the problem can be solved in O(n log n) time (Andrews and Wang, Algorithmica 2017). If the sensors have different radii the problem is known to be NP-hard to approximate within a constant factor (Czyzowicz et al., ADHOC-NOW 2009). We strengthen this result and prove that no polynomial time \rho^{1-\epsilon}-approximation algorithm exists unless P=NP, where \rho is the ratio between the largest radius and the smallest radius. Even when we restrict the number of sensors that are allowed to move by a parameter k, the problem turns out to be W[1]-hard. On the positive side we show that a ((2+\epsilon)\rho+2/\epsilon)-approximation can be computed in O(n^3/\epsilon^2) time and we prove fixed-parameter tractability when parameterized by the total movement assuming all numbers in the input are integers.
Cite as

Serge Gaspers, Joachim Gudmundsson, Julián Mestre, and Stefan Rümmele. Barrier Coverage with Non-uniform Lengths to Minimize Aggregate Movements. In 28th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 92, pp. 37:1-37:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{gaspers_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2017.37,
  author =	{Gaspers, Serge and Gudmundsson, Joachim and Mestre, Juli\'{a}n and R\"{u}mmele, Stefan},
  title =	{{Barrier Coverage with Non-uniform Lengths to Minimize Aggregate Movements}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2017)},
  pages =	{37:1--37:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-054-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{92},
  editor =	{Okamoto, Yoshio and Tokuyama, Takeshi},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2017.37},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-82591},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2017.37},
  annote =	{Keywords: Barrier coverage, Sensor movement, Approximation, Parameterized complexity}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.90
The Parameterized Complexity of Positional Games

Authors: Édouard Bonnet, Serge Gaspers, Antonin Lambilliotte, Stefan Rümmele, and Abdallah Saffidine

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 80, 44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017)

Abstract
We study the parameterized complexity of several positional games. Our main result is that Short Generalized Hex is W[1]-complete parameterized by the number of moves. This solves an open problem from Downey and Fellows’ influential list of open problems from 1999. Previously, the problem was thought of as a natural candidate for AW[*]-completeness. Our main tool is a new fragment of first-order logic where universally quantified variables only occur in inequalities. We show that model-checking on arbitrary relational structures for a formula in this fragment is W[1]-complete when parameterized by formula size. We also consider a general framework where a positional game is represented as a hypergraph and two players alternately pick vertices. In a Maker-Maker game, the first player to have picked all the vertices of some hyperedge wins the game. In a Maker-Breaker game, the first player wins if she picks all the vertices of some hyperedge, and the second player wins otherwise. In an Enforcer-Avoider game, the first player wins if the second player picks all the vertices of some hyperedge, and the second player wins otherwise. Short Maker-Maker, Short Maker-Breaker, and Short Enforcer-Avoider are respectively AW[*]-, W[1]-, and co-W[1]-complete parameterized by the number of moves. This suggests a rough parameterized complexity categorization into positional games that are complete for the first level of the W-hierarchy when the winning condition only depends on which vertices one player has been able to pick, but AW[*]-complete when it depends on which vertices both players have picked. However, some positional games with highly structured board and winning configurations are fixed-parameter tractable. We give another example of such a game, Short k-Connect, which is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the number of moves.
Cite as

Édouard Bonnet, Serge Gaspers, Antonin Lambilliotte, Stefan Rümmele, and Abdallah Saffidine. The Parameterized Complexity of Positional Games. In 44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 80, pp. 90:1-90:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{bonnet_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.90,
  author =	{Bonnet, \'{E}douard and Gaspers, Serge and Lambilliotte, Antonin and R\"{u}mmele, Stefan and Saffidine, Abdallah},
  title =	{{The Parameterized Complexity of Positional Games}},
  booktitle =	{44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2017)},
  pages =	{90:1--90:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-041-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{80},
  editor =	{Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Indyk, Piotr and Kuhn, Fabian and Muscholl, Anca},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.90},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-74941},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.90},
  annote =	{Keywords: Hex, Maker-Maker games, Maker-Breaker games, Enforcer-Avoider games, parameterized complexity theory}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2016.13
Turbocharging Treewidth Heuristics

Authors: Serge Gaspers, Joachim Gudmundsson, Mitchell Jones, Julián Mestre, and Stefan Rümmele

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 63, 11th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2016)

Abstract
A widely used class of algorithms for computing tree decompositions of graphs are heuristics that compute an elimination order, i.e., a permutation of the vertex set. In this paper, we propose to turbocharge these heuristics. For a target treewidth k, suppose the heuristic has already computed a partial elimination order of width at most k, but extending it by one more vertex exceeds the target width k. At this moment of regret, we solve a subproblem which is to recompute the last c positions of the partial elimination order such that it can be extended without exceeding width k. We show that this subproblem is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by k and c, but it is para-NP-hard and W[1]-hard when parameterized by only k or c, respectively. Our experimental evaluation of the FPT algorithm shows that we can trade a reasonable increase of the running time for quality of the solution.
Cite as

Serge Gaspers, Joachim Gudmundsson, Mitchell Jones, Julián Mestre, and Stefan Rümmele. Turbocharging Treewidth Heuristics. In 11th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 63, pp. 13:1-13:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{gaspers_et_al:LIPIcs.IPEC.2016.13,
  author =	{Gaspers, Serge and Gudmundsson, Joachim and Jones, Mitchell and Mestre, Juli\'{a}n and R\"{u}mmele, Stefan},
  title =	{{Turbocharging Treewidth Heuristics}},
  booktitle =	{11th International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation (IPEC 2016)},
  pages =	{13:1--13:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-023-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{63},
  editor =	{Guo, Jiong and Hermelin, Danny},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2016.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-69322},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.IPEC.2016.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: tree decomposition, heuristic, fixed-parameter tractability, local search}
}
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