Article : „Leaky choice” game - Lycée Żmichowska (Varsovie) Lycée Vicat (Souillac)

Two players alternately pull stones out of a hat which contains 7 stones (our players know that there are 7 of them). At each move, each player has only two possibilities: he removes either 1 or 3 stones (he cannot pull out 2 stones – that is why the choice is “leaky”). The one who pulls out the last stone wins. It is easy to find a winning strategy for one of the players. Then the problem is generalized to any number of stones and to different “leaky choices” for the number of stones the players are allowed to remove.