I've been reading about combinatorial games, specifically about positions in such games can be classified as either winning or losing positions. However, what I'm not sure about now is how I can represent draws using this: situations where neither player wins or loses. Do I use a winning position or losing position to represent a position where a draw has occurred? Why is such a representation correct?
Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
The analysis on the Brilliant page only works with games in which a draw is not possible. In general, you'd need to represent drawn positions as their own type of position; a drawn position can move to another drawn position (because both players can force a draw), or move to a winning position (if the person who just plays messes up and moves to a position where the other can win). It can't move to a losing position, because otherwise it'd be possible to win from the current state, and hence would be a winning state, not a drawn state.