Please join us for our first Graduate Student Interdisciplinary Mathematics Seminar/Association of Women in Mathematics (GSIMS/AWM) Talk of the Spring 2026 semester!
We are excited to kick off the series on Thursday, February 5, 2026, featuring a presentation by Evan Sabini (Department of Mathematics, Lehigh University).
- Time: 3:30 PM
- Location: CU 215
We look forward to seeing you there!
Title: Combinatorial Games: Two-Player Pebbling
Abstract: Combinatorial Game Theory focuses on studying two-player games to understand the result of a game based on a set of initial parameters such as the size of a starting set or the distributions of the elements in that set. We say a player has a winning strategy if a path to victory exists for every choice their opponent makes. The outcome of some combinatorial games such as Nim have been completely determined, while research is still being done on other games to determine which player has a winning strategy.
One such game is the two-player graph pebbling game. Based on classical graph pebbling, players take turns removing two pebbles from a vertex and placing a single pebble on an adjacent vertex. Player 1 wins if a pebble is placed on a specified root and Player 2 wins if the root is not reached and no pebbling moves remain. Previous work has demonstrated a successful strategy for Player 2 when the graph is a 4x4 grid or larger. This project is aimed at completing the cases that have not yet not been proven.
Want to learn more about GSIMS/AWM? Please reach out to Sam Dayton via email at sad324@lehigh.edu.