Solving games: Dependence of applicable solving procedures

We introduce an alternative concept to determine the solvability of two-player games with perfect information. This concept — based on games currently solved — claims that the applicable solving procedures have a significant influence on the solvability of games. This contrasts with current views that suggest that solvability is related to state-space and game-tree complexity. Twenty articles on this topic are discussed, including those that describe the currently obtained solutions. Results include a description of the available solving procedures as well as an overview of essential techniques from the past. Besides well-known classic games, the solvability of popular and recent games zèrtz, dvonn, and yinsh are analyzed. We conclude that our proposed concept could determine the solvability of games more accurately. Based on our concept, we expect that new solving techniques are required to obtain solutions for unsolved games. c © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.