Stability for Take-Away Games

Abstract

In this paper, we study a family of take-away games called $\alpha$-tag, parametrized by a real number $\alpha\ge 1$. We show that for any given $\alpha$, there is a half-open interval $I_\alpha$ containing $\alpha$ such that the set of losing positions for $\alpha$-tag is the same as the set of losing positions for $\beta$-tag if and only if $\beta\in I_\alpha$. We then end with some results and conjectures on the nature of these intervals.