LeetCode Nim Game

Description:

You are playing the following Nim Game with your friend: There is a heap of stones on the table, each time one of you take turns to remove 1 to 3 stones. The one who removes the last stone will be the winner. You will take the first turn to remove the stones.

Both of you are very clever and have optimal strategies for the game. Write a function to determine whether you can win the game given the number of stones in the heap.

For example, if there are 4 stones in the heap, then you will never win the game: no matter 1, 2, or 3 stones you remove, the last stone will always be removed by your friend.

Solution:

First I would declare one thing. When I got training on ACM-ICPC, I called this is the Bash game in combinatorial game theory instead of Nim game.

Of course, we can use dp solve this problem at first.

dp[1] = win

dp[2] = win

dp[3] = win

dp[4] = sg{dp[1], dp[2], dp[3] } = lose

sg function here is very simple, for the specific number of stones here, if all his descendants are win, then it must lose; else one of his descendants lose, he will win. This is also called the NP condition.

dp[5] = sg{ dp[2], dp[3],dp[4] } = win

...

And then we can find that if the number of stones is multiple of (3+1).

PS.

We can expand this problem to and m stones that one can take one time.

If n % (m+1) == 0, then the first player will lose; otherwise first player will win, and his first step should move n % (m+1) stones.

<span style="font-size:18px;">public class Solution {
    public boolean canWinNim(int n) {
        if (n%4==0)
            return false;
        return true;
    }
}</span>