Dear Tom:

You write neat code. It's best you'll do your own changes. What you are talking about is known as Misere Nim. You are lucky it's Nim. For other games Misere is not that simple. The strategy is a little more complex than for the "straight" Nim:

Play just as in ordinary Nim until all the heaps, with just one exception, contain a single chip. Then take all chips, or all but one, from the exceptional heap, so as to leave an odd number of heaps of size one.

Best

Copyright © 1996-2010 Alexander Bogomolny

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