Problem Archive

There are $n$ tennis players on a leader board, from rank $1$ (highest) to rank $n$ (lowest).

Every day, a match is held between a pair of players with adjacent ranks. When the higher rank player wins, nothing happens; otherwise, their ranks are exchanged, and we call that match an overtake by the winning player.

After $k$ days, the players find that all of them are back to their initial ranks. They then count the number of overtakes by each player.

Here is an example with $3$ players, named $A, B, C$ from highest to lowest initial rank.

Match Winner Loser Rank $1, 2, 3$
after match
Overtake counts
$A$ $B$ $C$
$1*$ $C$ $B$ $A, C, B$ $0$ $0$ $1$
$2$ $C$ $B$ $A, C, B$ $0$ $0$ $1$
$3*$ $C$ $A$ $C, A, B$ $0$ $0$ $2$
$4$ $A$ $B$ $C, A, B$ $0$ $0$ $2$
$5*$ $A$ $C$ $A, C, B$ $1$ $0$ $2$
$6*$ $B$ $C$ $A, B, C$ $1$ $1$ $2$

The matches marked with $*$ are overtakes.
After $6$ days, all players are back to initial ranks with overtake counts $1, 1, 2$.

Let $F(n, k)$ be the number of possible $n$-tuples of overtake counts after $k$ days, assuming that all players are back to initial ranks.
You are given $F(3, 4) = 8$ and $F(12, 34) = 2457178250$.

Find $F(123, 4567891) \bmod 1234567891$.

Solution
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