Question

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?

Answer 1

Answer: the winning strategy is to take 1 chip, leaving our opponent with the losing position of 5 chips.

Explanation:

suppose we start with 6 chips.

* If we take 1 chip, we leave our opponent with 5 - which we showed

was a losing position for him.

* If we take 2 chip (leaving 4), our opponent will take 3 - we lose.

* If we take 3 chip (leaving 3), our opponent will take 2 - we lose.

So our winning strategy is to take 1 chip, leaving our opponent with

the losing position of 5 chips.