Mojtaba and Hooman are playing a game. Initially Mojtaba draws vectors with zero sum. Then starting with Mojtaba, each player takes a vector and puts it on the plane. After the first move, the players must put the starting point of their vector on the end of the vector that the previous person drew, until a closed polygon is established. If this polygon is not self-intersecting, Mojtaba is the winner and otherwise Hooman is the winner. Who has a winning strategy?
Solution
Mojtaba has a winning strategy.
Let him consider a large vector to the left direction and small vectors facing towards right. Let these vectors be , , , , . So that we have
and
On his first move, Mojtaba chooses the large vector and places it on the plane.
Now both players must select a vector from the remaining vectors, which all are from left to right. Therefore none of these small vectors intersect each other, and the only possible way to have a pair of vectors intersecting each other is to have a small vector that cuts at some point other than the two ending points of . Assume that is the first vector to intersect with (, ..., ) is a permutation of the vectors, sorted by the time they're chosen). There's two cases, we either have and , or and . So we can translate the problem as following.
There are real numbers with . Each player, starting from Hooman chooses a number and writes it on the plane. Assume that numbers are arranged by , in order of the time they're chosen. Without loss of generality assume that (we will define 's so that there's no loss of generality, see the following). Mojtaba wins if for all we have
Also add this assumption that Mojtaba drew the initial vectors such that except for where . Now the winning strategy is quite simple. In each move, Mojtaba only needs to choose a positive (or if , a negative) , if such exists. Otherwise, he chooses an arbitrary remaining number. Now we have
We also always have unless all non-negative 's are chosen, and Mojtaba is forced to choose from the remaining negative numbers. Now if there's an index such that , since , there must be an index such that . But this is impossible, because means Mojtaba is out of positive numbers to choose from, so cannot exist which is a contradiction. Thus, there's no such and the claim that Mojtaba has a winning strategy is proved. ■