SUMS: Lo -- Misère Play Games - Why Losing Is Harder Than Winning

Speaker: Irene Lo (Princeton undergrad)

Abstract: Suppose there are some piles of jellybeans, and you and your
friend take turns taking jellybeans from any one pile. Can you be sure
to take the last jellybean and ’win’? Or can you magnanimously force
your friend to take the last one and ’lose’? We will cover a basic
introduction to impartial combinatorial game theory and discuss why
’losing’, or misère-play, strategies, are usually more difficult to
find than ’winning’, or normal-play, strategies.