A PSPACE-complete Sperner Triangle Game

We create a new two-player game on the Sperner Triangle based on Sperner's lemma. Our game has simple rules and several desirable properties. First, the game is always certain to have a winner. Second, like many other interesting games such as Hex and Geography, we prove that deciding whether one can win our game is a PSPACE-complete problem. Third, there is an elegant balance in the game such that neither the first nor the second player always has a decisive advantage. We provide a web-based version of the game, playable at: http://cs-people.bu.edu/paithan/spernerGame/. In addition we propose other games, also based on fixed-point theorems.

[1]  Xi Chen,et al.  Computing Nash Equilibria: Approximation and Smoothed Complexity , 2006, 2006 47th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS'06).

[2]  L. Brouwer Über Abbildung von Mannigfaltigkeiten , 1911 .

[3]  Xiaotie Deng,et al.  Settling the Complexity of Two-Player Nash Equilibrium , 2006, 2006 47th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS'06).

[4]  David Lichtenstein,et al.  GO Is Polynomial-Space Hard , 1980, JACM.

[5]  Stefan Reisch,et al.  Hex ist PSPACE-vollständig , 1981, Acta Informatica.

[6]  E. Sperner Neuer beweis für die invarianz der dimensionszahl und des gebietes , 1928 .

[7]  Christos H. Papadimitriou,et al.  On the Complexity of the Parity Argument and Other Inefficient Proofs of Existence , 1994, J. Comput. Syst. Sci..

[8]  D. Gale The Game of Hex and the Brouwer Fixed-Point Theorem , 1979 .