2,1

From Figure 9, p.14 of Lemoine. For whether or not there is a winning strategy obtained from a starting position with n points, see A164950. Sprouts is a two-player topological game, invented in 1967 by Michael Paterson and John Conway. The game starts with p spots, lasts at most 3p-1 moves, and the player who makes the last move wins. In the misere version of Sprouts, on the contrary, the player who makes the last move loses.

D. Applegate, G. Jacobson, and D. Sleator, Computer Analysis of Sprouts, Tech. Report CMU-CS-91-144, Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Technical Report, 1991.

Edwyn Berkelamp, John Conway, and Richard Guy, Winning ways for your mathematical plays, A K Peters, 2001.

Martin Gardner, Mathematical games : of sprouts and brussels sprouts, games with a topological flavor, Scientific American 217 (July 1967), 112-115.

Julien Lemoine, Simon Viennot, Analysis of misere Sprouts game with reduced canonical trees, Aug 30, 2009.

Cf. A164950.

Sequence in context: A054629 A030114 A001557 this_sequence A000814 A137931 A053493

Adjacent sequences: A164948 A164949 A164950 this_sequence A164952 A164953 A164954

nonn,uned

Jonathan Vos Post (jvospost3(AT)gmail.com), Sep 01 2009