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penny November 3rd, 2007

Two players.

Players take turns removing matches of any number. These matches must all come from any one row.

The objective is to be the last person to pick up ONE match.
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This game I first played with my father, who showed it to me in a book called “Oddities”. [I can't find this book online... but that's another matter.] I remembered it when I read in an article somewhere about the game Nim, which is a similar two-player game where players take turns removing elements from piles. It is analysed mathematically here.

One thing peculiar, and potentially interesting, about this game is that, the winning objective can be achieved way before the state of winning is attained. After playing the matchsticks game 7-5-3 several times you will realise what I mean.

But on a totally tangential rant, how come I can’t apply this same thinking to Chess? Essentially, chess players talk about how they are able to think far ahead, and can predict that they are in a winning state long before it is easily noticed by a novice opponent. I can do that with the card games Hearts and Bridge… but chess… eeeeh, nani?

Chess masters are gods.

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