Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems
Brice LJ, Henzinger TA, Thejaswini KS. 2026. Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems. 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science. LICS: Logic in Computer Science, LIPIcs, vol. 380, 23:1-23:26.
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Corresponding author has ISTA affiliation
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LIPIcs
Abstract
Consider a 4-player version of Matching Pennies where a team of three players competes against the Devil. Each player simultaneously says "Heads" or "Tails". The team wins if all four choices match; otherwise the Devil wins. If all team players randomise independently, they win with probability 1/8; if all players share a common source of randomness, they win with probability 1/2. What happens when each pair of team players shares a source of randomness? Can the team do better than win with probability 1/4? The surprising (and nontrivial) answer is yes!
We introduce Dicey Games, a formal framework motivated by the study of distributed systems with shared sources of randomness (of which the above example is a specific instance). We characterise the existence, representation and computational complexity of optimal strategies in Dicey Games, and we study the problem of allocating limited sources of randomness optimally within a team.
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Publishing Year
Date Published
2026-07-09
Proceedings Title
41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science
Publisher
Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Acknowledgement
This work was supported in part by the ERC-2020-AdG 101020093 (VAMOS).
Léonard Brice: Part of this work was realised when this author was an FNRS aspirant at Université libre de Bruxelles.
K. S. Thejaswini: Part of this work was realised when this author was a post-doctoral researcher at IST Austria.
Acknowledgements We thank all our colleagues who took the time to hear our puzzle and wasted several hours of their research time in pursuit of the optimal bounds for the 3-player matching.
pennies problem.
Volume
380
Article Number
23:1-23:26
Conference
LICS: Logic in Computer Science
Conference Location
Lisbon, Portugal
Conference Date
2026-07-20 – 2026-07-23
ISBN
ISSN
IST-REx-ID
Cite this
Brice LJ, Henzinger TA, Thejaswini KS. Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems. In: 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science. Vol 380. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik; 2026. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.23
Brice, L. J., Henzinger, T. A., & Thejaswini, K. S. (2026). Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems. In 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (Vol. 380). Lisbon, Portugal: Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.23
Brice, Leonard J, Thomas A Henzinger, and K. S. Thejaswini. “Dicey Games: Shared Sources of Randomness in Distributed Systems.” In 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, Vol. 380. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2026. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.23.
L. J. Brice, T. A. Henzinger, and K. S. Thejaswini, “Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems,” in 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, Lisbon, Portugal, 2026, vol. 380.
Brice LJ, Henzinger TA, Thejaswini KS. 2026. Dicey games: Shared sources of randomness in distributed systems. 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science. LICS: Logic in Computer Science, LIPIcs, vol. 380, 23:1-23:26.
Brice, Leonard J., et al. “Dicey Games: Shared Sources of Randomness in Distributed Systems.” 41st Annual Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, vol. 380, 23:1-23:26, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2026, doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.LICS.2026.23.
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