GM-rule and its applications to impartial games

Abstract

Given integer $n \geq 1, \ell \geq 2$, and vector $x = (x_1, \ldots, x_n)$ that has an entry which is a multiple of $\ell$ and such that $x_1 \leq \ldots \leq x_n$, the GM-rule is defined as follows: Keep the rightmost minimal entry $x_i$ of $x$, which is a multiple of $\ell$ and reduce the remaining $n-1$ entries of $x$ by~1. We will call such $i$ the {\em pivot} and $x_i$ the {\em pivotal entry}. The GM-rule respects monotonicity of the entries. It uniquely determines a GM-move $x^0 \to x^1$ and an infinite GM-sequence $S$ that consists of successive GM-moves $x = x^0 \to x^1 \to \ldots \to x^j \to \ldots$ . If $range(x) = x_n - x_1 \leq \ell$ then for all $j \geq 0$: (i) $range(x^j) \leq \ell$; (ii) the pivot of $x^{j + \ell}$ is one less than the pivot of $x^j$, assuming that $1 - 1 = 0 = n$. (iii) $x_i^j - x_i^{j + n \ell} = (n-1) \ell$ for all $i = 1,\ldots,n$. Due to (iii), we compute $x^j$ in time linear in $n, \ell, \log(j)$, and $\sum^n_{i=1}\log(|x_i|+1)$. For $\ell = 2$ a slighty modified version of the GM-rule was recently introduced by Gurvich, Martynov, Maximchuk, and Vyalyi, "On Remoteness Functions of Exact Slow $k$-NIM with $k+1$ Piles", arXiv:2304.06498 (2023), where applications to impartial games were considered.