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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.

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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}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.40

Maker-Maker Games of Rank 4 Are PSPACE-Complete

Authors: Florian Galliot and Jonas Sénizergues

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract

The Maker-Maker convention of positional games is played on a hypergraph whose edges are interpreted as winning sets. Two players take turns picking a previously unpicked vertex, aiming at being first to pick all the vertices of some edge. Optimal play can only lead to a first player win or a draw, and deciding between the two is known to be PSPACE-complete even for 6-uniform hypergraphs. We establish PSPACE-completeness for hypergraphs of rank 4. As an intermediary, we use the recently introduced achievement positional games, a more general convention in which each player has their own winning sets (blue and red). We show that deciding whether the blue player has a winning strategy as the first player is PSPACE-complete even with blue edges of size 2 or 3 and pairwise disjoint red edges of size 2. The result for hypergraphs of rank 4 in the Maker-Maker convention follows as a simple corollary.

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Florian Galliot and Jonas Sénizergues. Maker-Maker Games of Rank 4 Are PSPACE-Complete. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 40:1-40:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{galliot_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.40,
  author =	{Galliot, Florian and S\'{e}nizergues, Jonas},
  title =	{{Maker-Maker Games of Rank 4 Are PSPACE-Complete}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.40},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255298},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Game theory, Positional games, Combinatorial games, Complexity, Hypergraphs}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2024.2

Poset Positional Games

Authors: Guillaume Bagan, Eric Duchêne, Florian Galliot, Valentin Gledel, Mirjana Mikalački, Nacim Oijid, Aline Parreau, and Miloš Stojaković

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 291, 12th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2024)

Abstract

We propose a generalization of positional games, supplementing them with a restriction on the order in which the elements of the board are allowed to be claimed. We introduce poset positional games, which are positional games with an additional structure - a poset on the elements of the board. Throughout the game play, based on this poset and the set of the board elements that are claimed up to that point, we reduce the set of available moves for the player whose turn it is - an element of the board can only be claimed if all the smaller elements in the poset are already claimed. We proceed to analyze these games in more detail, with a prime focus on the most studied convention, the Maker-Breaker games. First we build a general framework around poset positional games. Then, we perform a comprehensive study of the complexity of determining the game outcome, conditioned on the structure of the family of winning sets on the one side and the structure of the poset on the other.

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Guillaume Bagan, Eric Duchêne, Florian Galliot, Valentin Gledel, Mirjana Mikalački, Nacim Oijid, Aline Parreau, and Miloš Stojaković. Poset Positional Games. In 12th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 291, pp. 2:1-2:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{bagan_et_al:LIPIcs.FUN.2024.2,
  author =	{Bagan, Guillaume and Duch\^{e}ne, Eric and Galliot, Florian and Gledel, Valentin and Mikala\v{c}ki, Mirjana and Oijid, Nacim and Parreau, Aline and Stojakovi\'{c}, Milo\v{s}},
  title =	{{Poset Positional Games}},
  booktitle =	{12th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2024)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-314-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{291},
  editor =	{Broder, Andrei Z. and Tamir, Tami},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2024.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-199100},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2024.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Positional games, Maker-Breaker games, Game complexity, Poset, Connect 4}
}

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Documents authored by Galliot, Florian

Token Positional Games

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Maker-Maker Games of Rank 4 Are PSPACE-Complete

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Poset Positional Games

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