Negative rank differences at rank zero #
This is the rank-theoretic part of Lemma 3.1(2) in the paper. The paper phrases it using supports of a chosen effective representative; the intrinsic form below avoids choosing representatives and is exactly what the later reduced-divisor calculation consumes.
theorem
Bananas.rankDelta_neg_iff_rank_zero_deletions
(M : TwiceMarked)
(D : CFDiv M.graph)
(hD : rank M.graph D = 0)
:
At rank zero, a negative marked second difference says precisely that each one-chip deletion remains winnable while the two-chip deletion is not. This formulation is invariant under changing the divisor within its linear equivalence class.