On 18/11/2014 01:54, Adam P. Goucher wrote:
Nim (which of course isn't unfair in quite the same way as Brussels Sprouts, but does have the property that one who understands the game can immediately tell who can win given the initial position)
Every impartial game is as bad as Nim. #SpragueGrundy
And indeed every not-impartial game of the same complete-information type. #Conway But some have more transparent strategies than others -- and Mr Baxter remarks on, e.g., the difficulty of determining what happens with best play in chess, which I think makes it less unfair in his eyes. (For my part, I agree that merely having a definite winner with perfect play does not make a game "unfair" in any useful sense. But there might be something "unfair" about challenging someone to a game of nim if you know how to compute its Grundy numbers and they're trying to analyse positions by brute force.) -- g