Restricted Positional Games

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new restricted positional game called Connect-Tac-Toe, generalizes Connect-4 to hypercubes, and analyzes its restrictiveness using a variant of the Hales-Jewett number, providing bounds for it.

Contribution

It defines a novel restricted positional game, Connect-Tac-Toe, and develops a framework to analyze its restrictiveness through a modified Hales-Jewett number.

Findings

Introduced Connect-Tac-Toe as a new restricted positional game.

Established a logarithmic lower bound for the game’s Hales-Jewett number.

Connected the game’s restrictiveness to hypercube structures.

Abstract

A positional game is a game where two players sequentially label vertices of a hypergraph, consisting of a board and a collection of winning sets, with colors assigned to each player until all vertices of the board are claimed. The first player to claim all elements of a winning set wins. If no player claims all the elements of a winning set, then the game results in a draw. One such example of a positional game is Tic-Tac-Toe, where the board is the 3-by-3 grid. The popular game of Connect-4 is an example of what we define to be a "restricted positional game". Here, we introduce another example of a restricted positional game, Connect-Tac-Toe, which additionally has the influence of gravity-like restrictions to affect what plays are possible. It is a generalization of the Connect-4 game for the hypercube. We define a variant of the Hales-Jewett number for this game as a way to classify its restrictiveness and provide a logarithmic lower bound for this number.