Combinatorial Game Theory

Combinatorial Game Theory studies strategies and mathematics of two-player games of perfect knowledge such as chess or go (but often either concentrating instead on simpler games such as nim, or solving endgames and other special cases). An important distinction between this subject and classical game theory (a branch of economics) is that game players are assumed to move in sequence rather than simultanously, so there is no point in randomization or other information-hiding strategies.

The bible of combinatorial game theory is Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, by E. R. Berlekamp, J. H. Conway, and R. K. Guy; the mathematical foundations of the field are provided by Conway's earlier book On Numbers and Games. Many papers from the more recent collections Games of No Chance and More Games of No Chance are now also available online. If you haven't read these, get thee to a library!

Recent additions:

Older stuff:

David Eppstein, Dept. Inf. & Comp. Sci., UC Irvine.