Marienbad strategy - best stroke research

If you have found the game in a winning situation, you will leave in a non-winning situation, and your only hope is that your opponent makes a mistake, try to put the game in an unusual situation for him ...

If you have found the game in a non-winning situation who is not finishing or pre-finishing state (see the specific page), the best stroke is a stroke that puts again even S1, S2 and S3. This will require that the stroke changes the odd sums while keeping even the sums that were already. This will depend on sums that was odd.

It would be too long to detail all cases, but here are some examples:

• If only S1 is odd, remove a match in a row with an odd number of matches (there may be one or three),
• If S1 and S2 but not S3 are odd, you can remove three matches in a row with an odd number of matches unless it has five matches, or remove a match in a row with an even number of matches unless it has four matches.

You will be able to find in all cases one or several solutions, and choose between the solutions if there are several.

If you master binary algebra, you will find a technique for searching winning strokes in particular chapter.