I want to helt to find out the grundy value to define a winning strategy for this game. Player 1 and 2 starts from position A where player 1 is the first one to move. The arrows show possibles ways that players can go. Lets say player 1 starts and the only possible way is from A to B. The next player to move is 2 where he has a possibility to move to C. What i know is that position D has grundy value 0 beacuse your are not able to go any way from there. But what what im uncertain in is the position in C where the player can choose to go to D or choose to go back to A.
2026-03-30 16:21:47.1774887707
Define Grundy values
213 Views Asked by Bumbble Comm https://math.techqa.club/user/bumbble-comm/detail At
1
There are 1 best solutions below
Related Questions in COMBINATORIAL-GAME-THEORY
- Can Zermelo's theorem be extended to a game which always has a winner?
- Unrestricted Gomoku on a small board
- combinatorial game of sheets
- Analysis of a combinatorial game with prime numbers
- Even numbers combinatorial game
- Show that there exists at least one player who wins a trophy
- Tower Of Hanoi (4 Pegs)
- Queues and permutation/combination
- Maths strategy games
- Find number of solutions to special "Lights Out!" puzzle scenarios
Trending Questions
- Induction on the number of equations
- How to convince a math teacher of this simple and obvious fact?
- Find $E[XY|Y+Z=1 ]$
- Refuting the Anti-Cantor Cranks
- What are imaginary numbers?
- Determine the adjoint of $\tilde Q(x)$ for $\tilde Q(x)u:=(Qu)(x)$ where $Q:U→L^2(Ω,ℝ^d$ is a Hilbert-Schmidt operator and $U$ is a Hilbert space
- Why does this innovative method of subtraction from a third grader always work?
- How do we know that the number $1$ is not equal to the number $-1$?
- What are the Implications of having VΩ as a model for a theory?
- Defining a Galois Field based on primitive element versus polynomial?
- Can't find the relationship between two columns of numbers. Please Help
- Is computer science a branch of mathematics?
- Is there a bijection of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not?
- Identification of a quadrilateral as a trapezoid, rectangle, or square
- Generator of inertia group in function field extension
Popular # Hahtags
second-order-logic
numerical-methods
puzzle
logic
probability
number-theory
winding-number
real-analysis
integration
calculus
complex-analysis
sequences-and-series
proof-writing
set-theory
functions
homotopy-theory
elementary-number-theory
ordinary-differential-equations
circles
derivatives
game-theory
definite-integrals
elementary-set-theory
limits
multivariable-calculus
geometry
algebraic-number-theory
proof-verification
partial-derivative
algebra-precalculus
Popular Questions
- What is the integral of 1/x?
- How many squares actually ARE in this picture? Is this a trick question with no right answer?
- Is a matrix multiplied with its transpose something special?
- What is the difference between independent and mutually exclusive events?
- Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain
- taylor series of $\ln(1+x)$?
- How to tell if a set of vectors spans a space?
- Calculus question taking derivative to find horizontal tangent line
- How to determine if a function is one-to-one?
- Determine if vectors are linearly independent
- What does it mean to have a determinant equal to zero?
- Is this Batman equation for real?
- How to find perpendicular vector to another vector?
- How to find mean and median from histogram
- How many sides does a circle have?

This type of game is called "loopy", since the graph of positions has a loop: $\begin{matrix}A\\\downarrow & \nwarrow\\B & \rightarrow & C\end{matrix}$
The Sprague-Grundy theory is only enough to handle loopfree games that don't have loops like this. However, there is a generalization of the theory that adds special values for positions that can generate draws (where the game goes on forever) in perfectly played sums. You can find detailed discussion of the generalized Sprague-Grundy theory on MathOverflow at https://mathoverflow.net/a/149084/28209
For the particular game in the question, it turns out we don't need any of the new values, though we do need some of the ideas of the generalized theory. Essentially, we look to discover the Grundy values one step at a time, using what we learned in previous steps (when we never find values this way is when the new values would be needed). I'll outline how this is done:
Stage 0
We know that since $D$ is a terminal position, the Grundy value of $D$ should be 0. We don't know anything about the other positions yet.
Stage 1
We know that the only option from $A$ is to $B$. Since we don't know if $B$ has value $0$, maybe $A$ has no move to value $0$ so that it would have to have value $0$ itself. We should check that any move from $A$ to a position with unknown value can be reversed back to $0$. But after a move from $A$ to $B$, the next move would be to $C$, whose value we don't know yet, so we can't figure out $A$'s value right now.
We know that the only options from $C$ are to $A$ and $D$ (which has value $0$). Since we don't know if $A$ has value $1$, maybe $C$ has no move to value $1$ so that it would have to have value $1$ itself. We should check that any move from $C$ to a position with unknown value can be reversed back to $1$. But after a move from $C$ to $A$, the next move would be to $B$, whose value we don't know yet, so we can't figure out $C$'s value right now. However, we know that $C$ doesn't have value $0$ (thanks Ross Millikan) since there's a move from $C$ to the value-$0$ position $D$.
We know that the only option from $B$ is $C$. Since we know that $C$ doesn't have value $0$, $B$ has no move to value $0$ so that it would have to have value $0$ itself.
Stage 2
After a move from $C$ to $A$, the next move would be to $B$, whose value is now known to be $0$, not the $1$ we were hoping for. Therefore, we still don't know $C$'s value.
Since the only move from $A$ is to $B$ (which has value $0$), we know $A$ must have value $1$.
Stage 3
Finally, we now know that $C$'s options have value $0$ and $1$, so that $C$ has value $2$. In summary, we have the following values: $C:2,A:1,B:0,D:0$.
For many loopy games, this process wouldn't end in any finite number of stages. As in that kind of case, we would need new values other than natural numbers to describe positions with enough information to know how they play in sums. Basically, all of the positions with "unknown" values require us to keep track of all of the "known" values of their options if we want to know the outcome of a sum (next player wins, previous player wins, both players can force a draw).