#undergradresearch — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Kyle Burke @[email protected] · 2026-05-07 · 14:10 UTC

One of my students coded up some Toads and Frogs games last year and this semester wanted to improve the Elephants and Rhinos positions so they were all generated with mean value of zero.

The issue is that if you generate really random E&R boards, they are often either extremely unbalanced or there are very few moves available.

They got it working! Now you can play Elephants and Rhinos games where it's complicated to find and make the best moves. Try it out here:

https://kyleburke.info/DB/combGames/elephantsAndRhinos.html

(I don't want to say it's "hard" because you can still find them in polynomial time.)

#CombinatorialGames #UndergradResearch

#undergradresearch #combinatorialgames

Kyle Burke @[email protected] · 2026-04-12 · 18:20 UTC

#Sprouts2026 was yesterday and it was great! Sprouts is our annual conference in abstract games (often #CombinatorialGames) where students present #UndergradResearch for the contributed talks.

Here are my summaries of the talks: https://combinatorialgametheory.blogspot.com/2026/04/sprouts-2026-summaries.html

Here are a bunch of my after-the-fact thoughts: https://combinatorialgametheory.blogspot.com/2026/04/sprouts-2026-afterthoughts.html

I need to make sure I figure a bunch of those things out in time for next year!

Thank you to everyone who attended and especially to all of our great speakers. Craig and I agreed that we're very lucky to get such amazing talks!

#undergradresearch #combinatorialgames #sprouts2026

Kyle Burke @[email protected] · 2026-03-31 · 15:11 UTC

The #Sprouts2026 program is coming along! We have nine contributed talks all lined up (from undergrads) and our keynote info should be going up later this week. https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2026/

#CombinatorialGames #UndergradResearch

#undergradresearch #combinatorialgames #sprouts2026

Kyle Burke @[email protected] · 2026-02-14 · 15:53 UTC

We got our first talk scheduled for #Sprouts2026! https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2026/ I'm looking forward to receiving more proposals.

I've also been getting questions about writing #AIPlayers and updated the directions on that page. https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2026/sprouts2026ComputerTournament.php (Some of the notes were about last year's game, whoops!)

#CombinatorialGames #UndergradResearch

#undergradresearch #combinatorialgames #aiplayers #sprouts2026

Kyle Burke @[email protected] · 2026-01-15 · 21:24 UTC

We have a date for #Sprouts2026: Saturday, April 11, 2026. Woo!

Sprouts is a #CombinatorialGames conference where undergrads give the contributed talks. Everyone can attend. Registration is free and we have great talks as well as human and computer tournaments.

This year we're playing #BattleSheep. Come join us at Sprouts! https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2026/

#UndergradResearch

#undergradresearch #battlesheep #combinatorialgames #sprouts2026