Building Nim

DOI10.1007/S00182-015-0489-3zbMATH Open1388.91075arXiv1502.04068OpenAlexW4206950331MaRDI QIDQ524964FDOQ524964

Silvia Heubach, Matthieu Dufour, Urban Larsson, E. Duchêne

Publication date: 27 April 2017

Published in: International Journal of Game Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The game of nim, with its simple rules, its elegant solution and its historical importance is the quintessence of a combinatorial game, which is why it led to so many generalizations and modifications. We present a modification with a new spin: building nim. With given finite numbers of tokens and stacks, this two-player game is played in two stages (thus belonging to the same family of games as e.g. nine-men's morris): first building, where players alternate to put one token on one of the, initially empty, stacks until all tokens have been used. Then, the players play nim. Of course, because the solution for the game of nim is known, the goal of the player who starts nim play is a placement of the tokens so that the Nim-sum of the stack heights at the end of building is different from 0. This game is trivial if the total number of tokens is odd as the Nim-sum could never be 0, or if both the number of tokens and the number of stacks are even, since a simple mimicking strategy results in a Nim-sum of 0 after each of the second player's moves. We present the solution for this game for some non-trivial cases and state a general conjecture.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04068

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zbMATH Keywords

combinatorial gameNim

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial games (91A46)

Cites Work

• The combinatorial game theory of well-tempered scoring games
• Permutations of the natural numbers with prescribed difference multisets
• 2-pile Nim with a restricted number of move-size imitations
• Circular Nim games
• Vertex Nim played on graphs
• Playing Nim on a simplicial complex
• Sequential compounds of combinatorial games

Cited In (2)

• The switch operators and push-the-button games: a sequential compound over rulesets
• Title not available (Why is that?)

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