When: Saturday, April 23, 2022

Where: Virtual

Sprouts is a Combinatorial Games Conference oriented towards undergraduate research, created as a joint collaboration between the University of New England and Plymouth State University. Sprouts is also a combinatorial game that is especially popular in the Netherlands.

What is CGT?

Combinatorial Game Theory is the mathematical study of turn-base games ("rulesets") where:

Many nice properties emerge from this, especially when we add games together. This conference is all about playing games, analyzing games, and even creating new games.

For a good introduction to Combinatorial Game Theory, we recommend these books:

Why Should I Attend Sprouts?

This conference includes talks oriented towards undergrads, sessions for looking at unsolved problems, and both a human and computer game tournament. Prior knowledge of Combinatorial Game Theory is not necessary. (The first talk will cover much of the basics.) Although we expect the topics to be mostly applicable for Math and Computing students, everyone who enjoys abstract games is welcome!

There is no registration fee for Sprouts.

Registration

There is no cost to register for this conference. Email Kyle (paithanq@gmail.com) to officially register. (It's still free!) Please include "Sprouts 2022 Registration" in the subject line of your email.

Call for Talks

We are now accepting talk proposals. Preference will be given to talks by undergraduates and high-school students. All talks should be accessible to an undergraduate-level audience. Talk slots are usually 15 minutes long, and speakers should plan to talk for about 10 minutes, then answer questions for the remainder of the time.

To propose a talk, email your talk title and abstract to Kyle (paithanq@gmail.com).

Agenda

Thursday and Friday, April 21 and 22

Kyle will run the computer Popping Balloons tournament.

Saturday, April 23

All times are listed in Eastern Time (ET). All events will take place on Zoom. The Zoom link will be made available to those who register.

Talk Abstracts

Abstracts will appear here.

Conference Ruleset

This year we'll be playing Popping Balloons! We're going to have a tournament for computer players and we might have one for human players if we can find some nice way to do that over gather.town. We do have a site where you can play Popping Balloons as a human.

Travel Information

Sprouts 2022 will be held virtually, so there's no physical travel necessary.

Virtual Travel

Organizers

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Plymouth State Computer Science and Technology and University of New England Mathematics disciplines for supporting the Sprouts conference series.

Poster

Other CGT

Previous Sprouts Conferences

Other Combinatorial Games Conferences