need to help trying to identify this game.

[JoPh]

i was at a friends bbq last night and one of the guys said lets play this easy game.. i cannot figure out what it was or the way to win in it. since he really wont go into detail about it i figured id come here

objective.
there are 4 rows of some type of piece. a row of 3, a row of 4, a row of 5, a row of 6. the object is you dont want to be left with the last piece. you can take as many of the pieces from one row as you want..

looks like this
O O O
O O O O
O O O O O
O O O O O O

since he challenges i get to deiced who goes first....

i played for like an hour and i could not figure out how to win... anyone familier with a game like this? i was told once you figure it out you wont be able to lose.


any ideas?

 

[Nik]

I've seen that game played under many different names. I dunno the original name for it, but good luck.

I hated that retarded game too, btw

 

[JoPh]

I've seen that game played under many different names. I dunno the original name for it, but good luck.

I hated that retarded game too, btw

it is frustrating.. been trying to google different things but no luck yet.

 

[Maximilian]

I dunno, connect4 maybe

Whatever it is you can probably win at it by cheating :thumbsup:

 

[gorcorps]

I stumbled on a web version a few weeks ago... don't remember what it was called but I do know it was impossible to beat that damn computer.

 

[esun]

Nim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim

Oh and the optimal strategy is to XOR (i.e., add over GF(2)) the binary representations of the heaps and ensure that after your turn, the XOR is 0. You have to make sure you have the first turn if initially this XOR is not zero or the second turn if initially it is zero.