Part I.

Impartial Combinatorial Games

1. Take-Away Games.

Combinatorial games are two-person games with perfect information and no chance
moves, and with a win-or-lose outcome. Such a game is determined by a set of positions,
including an initial position, and the player whose turn it is to move. Play moves from one
position to another, with the players usually alternating moves, until a terminal position
is reached. A terminal position is one from which no moves are possible. Then one of the
players is declared the winner and the other the loser.
There are two main references for the material on combinatorial games. One is the
research book, On Numbers and Games by J. H. Conway, Academic Press, 1976. This
book introduced many of the basic ideas of the subject and led to a rapid growth of the
area that continues today. The other reference, more appropriate for this class, is the
two-volume book, Winning Ways for your mathematical plays by Berlekamp, Conway and
Guy, Academic Press, 1982, in paperback. There are many interesting games described in
this book and much of it is accessible to the undergraduate mathematics student. This
theory may be divided into two parts, impartial games in which the set of moves available
from any given position is the same for both players, and partizan games in which each
player has a different set of possible moves from a given position. Games like chess or
checkers in which one player moves the white pieces and the other moves the black pieces
are partizan. In Part I, we treat only the theory of impartial games. An elementary
introduction to impartial combinatorial games is given in the book Fair Game by Richard
K. Guy, published in the COMAP Mathematical Exploration Series, 1989. We start with
a simple example.
1.1 A Simple Take-Away Game. Here are the rules of a very simple impartial
combinatorial game of removing chips from a pile of chips.
(1) There are two players. We label them I and II.
(2) There is a pile of 21 chips in the center of a table.
(3) A move consists of removing one, two, or three chips from the pile. At least one
chip must be removed, but no more than three may be removed.
(4) Players alternate moves with Player I starting.
(5) The player that removes the last chip wins. (The last player to move wins. If you
can’t move, you lose.)
How can we analyze this game? Can one of the players force a win in this game?
Which player would you rather be, the player who starts or the player who goes second?
What is a good strategy?
We analyze this game from the end back to the beginning. This method is sometimes
called backward induction.

I–3
 If there are just one, two, or three chips left, the player who moves next wins
simply by taking all the chips.
Suppose there are four chips left. Then the player who moves next must
leave either one, two or three chips in the pile and his opponent will be able to
win. So four chips left is a loss for the next player to move and a win for the
previous player, i.e. the one who just moved.
With 5, 6, or 7 chips left, the player who moves next can win by moving to
the position with four chips left.
With 8 chips left, the next player to move must leave 5, 6, or 7 chips, and so
the previous player can win.
We see that positions with 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, . . . chips are target positions; we
would like to move into them. We may now analyze the game with 21 chips.
Since 21 is not divisible by 4, the first player to move can win. The unique
optimal move is to take one chip and leave 20 chips which is a target position.

1.2 What is a Combinatorial Game? We now define the notion of a combinatorial

game more precisely. It is a game that satisfies the following conditions.
(1) There are two players.
(2) There is a set, usually finite, of possible positions of the game.
(3) The rules of the game specify for both players and each position which moves to
other positions are legal moves. If the rules make no distinction between the players, that
is if both players have the same options of moving from each position, the game is called
impartial; otherwise, the game is called partizan.
(4) The players alternate moving.
(5) The game ends when a position is reached from which no moves are possible for
the player whose turn it is to move. Under the normal play rule, the last player to move
wins. Under the misère play rule the last player to move loses.
If the game never ends, it is declared a draw. However, we shall nearly always add
the following condition, called the Ending Condition. This eliminates the possibility of
a draw.
(6) The game ends in a finite number of moves no matter how it is played.
It is important to note what is omitted in this definition. No random moves such as the
rolling of dice or the dealing of cards are allowed. This rules out games like backgammon
and poker. A combinatorial game is a game of perfect information: simultaneous moves
and hidden moves are not allowed. This rules out battleship and scissors-paper-rock. No
draws in a finite number of moves are possible. This rules out tic-tac-toe. In these notes,
we restrict attention to impartial games, generally under the normal play rule.

1.3 P-positions, N-positions. Returning to the take-away game of Section 1.1,

we see that 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, . . . are positions that are winning for the Previous player (the
player who just moved) and that 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, . . . are winning for the Next player
to move. The former are called P-positions, and the latter are called N-positions. The

I–4
P-positions are just those with a number of chips divisible by 4, called target positions in
Section 1.1.
In impartial combinatorial games, one can find in principle which positions are P-
positions and which are N-positions by (possibly transfinite) induction using the following
labeling procedure starting at the terminal positions. We say a position in a game is a
terminal position, if no moves from it are possible. This algorithm is just the method
we used to solve the take-away game of Section 1.1.
Step 1: Label every terminal position as a P-position.
Step 2: Label every position that can reach a labelled P-position in one move as an
N-position.
Step 3: Find those positions whose only moves are to labelled N-positions; label such
positions as P-positions.
Step 4: If no new P-positions were found in step 3, stop; otherwise return to step 2.
It is easy to see that the strategy of moving to P-positions wins. From a P-position,
your opponent can move only to an N-position (3). Then you may move back to a P-
position (2). Eventually the game ends at a terminal position and since this is a P-position,
you win (1).
Here is a characterization of P-positions and N-positions that is valid for impartial
combinatorial games satisfying the ending condition, under the normal play rule.

Characteristic Property. P-positions and N-positions are defined recursively by the

following three statements.
(1) All terminal positions are P-positions.
(2) From every N-position, there is at least one move to a P-position.
(3) From every P-position, every move is to an N-position.

For games using the misére play rule, condition (1) should be replaced by the condition
that all terminal positions are N-positions.

1.4 Subtraction Games. Let us now consider a class of combinatorial games that
contains the take-away game of Section 1.1 as a special case. Let S be a set of positive
integers. The subtraction game with subtraction set S is played as follows. From a pile
with a large number, say n, of chips, two players alternate moves. A move consists of
removing s chips from the pile where s ∈ S. Last player to move wins.
The take-away game of Section 1.1 is the subtraction game with subtraction set S =
{1, 2, 3}. In Exercise 1.2, you are asked to analyze the subtraction game with subtraction
set S = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}.
For illustration, let us analyze the subtraction game with subtraction set S = {1, 3, 4}
by finding its P-positions. There is exactly one terminal position, namely 0. Then 1, 3,
and 4 are N-positions, since they can be moved to 0. But 2 then must be a P-position
since the only legal move from 2 is to 1, which is an N-position. Then 5 and 6 must be
N-positions since they can be moved to 2. Now we see that 7 must be a P-position since
the only moves from 7 are to 6, 4, or 3, all of which are N-positions.

I–5
 Now we continue similarly: we see that 8, 10 and 11 are N-positions, 9 is a P-position,
12 and 13 are N-positions and 14 is a P-position. This extends by induction. We find
that the set of P-positions is P = {0, 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, . . .}, the set of nonnegative integers
leaving remainder 0 or 2 when divided by 7. The set of N-positions is the complement,
N = {1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, . . .}.

x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 . . .
position P N P N N N N P N P N N N N P ...

The pattern P NP NNNN of length 7 repeats forever.

Who wins the game with 100 chips, the first player or the second? The P-positions
are the numbers equal to 0 or 2 modulus 7. Since 100 has remainder 2 when divided by 7,
100 is a P-position; the second player to move can win with optimal play.

1.5 Exercises.
1. Consider the misère version of the take-away game of Section 1.1, where the last
player to move loses. The object is to force your opponent to take the last chip. Analyze
this game. What are the target positions (P-positions)?
2. Generalize the Take-Away Game: (a) Suppose in a game with a pile containing a
large number of chips, you can remove any number from 1 to 6 chips at each turn. What
is the winning strategy? What are the P-positions? (b) If there are initially 31 chips in
the pile, what is your winning move, if any?
3. The Thirty-one Game. (Geoffrey Mott-Smith (1954)) From a deck of cards,
take the Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of each suit. These 24 cards are laid out face up on a table.
The players alternate turning over cards and the sum of the turned over cards is computed
as play progresses. Each Ace counts as one. The player who first makes the sum go above
31 loses. It would seem that this is equivalent to the game of the previous exercise played
on a pile of 31 chips. But there is a catch. No integer may be chosen more than four times.
(a) If you are the first to move, and if you use the strategy found in the previous exercise,
what happens if the opponent keeps choosing 4?
(b) Nevertheless, the first player can win with optimal play. How?
4. Find the set of P-positions for the subtraction games with subtraction sets
(a) S = {1, 3, 5, 7}.
(b) S = {1, 3, 6}.
(c) S = {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, . . .} = all powers of 2.
(d) Who wins each of these games if play starts at 100 chips, the first player or the second?
5. Empty and Divide. (Ferguson (1998)) There are two boxes. Initially, one box
contains m chips and the other contains n chips. Such a position is denoted by (m, n),
where m > 0 and n > 0. The two players alternate moving. A move consists of emptying
one of the boxes, and dividing the contents of the other between the two boxes with at
least one chip in each box. There is a unique terminal position, namely (1, 1). Last player
to move wins. Find all P-positions.
6. Chomp! A game invented by Fred. Schuh (1952) in an arithmetical form was
discovered independently in a completely different form by David Gale (1974). Gale’s

I–6
version of the game involves removing squares from a rectangular board, say an m by n
board. A move consists in taking a square and removing it and all squares to the right
and above. Players alternate moves, and the person to take square (1, 1) loses. The
name “Chomp” comes from imagining the board as a chocolate bar, and moves involving
breaking off some corner squares to eat. The square (1, 1) is poisoned though; the player
who chomps it loses. You can play this game on the web at
http://www.math.ucla.edu/ tom/Games/chomp.html .
˜
For example, starting with an 8 by 3 board, suppose the first player chomps at (6, 2)
gobbling 6 pieces, and then

second player chomps at (2, 3) gobbling 4 pieces, leaving the
following board, where denotes the poisoned piece.

(a) Show that this position is a N-position, by finding a winning move for the first
player. (It is unique.)
(b) It is known that the first player can win all rectangular starting positions. The
proof, though ingenious, is not hard. However, it is an “existence” proof. It shows that
there is a winning strategy for the first player, but gives no hint on how to find the first
move! See if you can find the proof. Here is a hint: Does removing the upper right corner
constitute a winning move?
7. Dynamic subtraction. One can enlarge the class of subtraction games by letting
the subtraction set depend on the last move of the opponent. Many early examples appear
in Chapter 12 of Schuh (1968). Here are two other examples. (For a generalization, see
Schwenk (1970).)
(a) There is one pile of n chips. The first player to move may remove as many chips as
desired, at least one chip but not the whole pile. Thereafter, the players alternate moving,
each player not being allowed to remove more chips than his opponent took on the previous
move. What is an optimal move for the first player if n = 44? For what values of n does
the second player have a win?
(b) Fibonacci Nim. (Whinihan (1963)) The same rules as in (a), except that a player
may take at most twice the number of chips his opponent took on the previous move.
The analysis of this game is more difficult than the game of part (a) and depends on the
sequence of numbers named after Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci, which may be defined as
F1 = 1, F2 = 2, and Fn+1 = Fn + Fn−1 for n ≥ 2. The Fibonacci sequence is thus:
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, . . .. The solution is facilitated by

Zeckendorf ’s Theorem. Every positive integer can be written uniquely as a sum of

distinct non-neighboring Fibonacci numbers.

There may be many ways of writing a number as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, but
there is only one way of writing it as a sum of non-neighboring Fibonacci numbers. Thus,
43=34+8+1 is the unique way of writing 43, since although 43=34+5+3+1, 5 and 3 are

I–7