Deterministic Games

A game is deterministic if the resolution of player actions leads to theoretically predictable outcomes. It is nondeterministic to one degree or another if actions lead to random outcomes. Chess is an example of a determinist game: the rules allow for no variation of outcome and there are no physical factors involved. The entire range of possible positions of a chess game is finite. Football, on the other hand, is a nondeterministic game: players cannot reliably kick the ball exactly the same way each time, and the small variations of that action lead to chaotic outcomes. Similarly, there are infinite possible positions of a football game, in that any player can be moved any tiny amount over, and this might affect the outcome of the game.

Deterministic games are often described as directed graphs, specifically, each node in a graph represents a position, and each child node represents possible following moves. This concept is given more treatment in the graph search wiki.