Tic Tac Toe is a game that can end in a draw. So in any Tic Tac Toe game state, either one of the two players can force a win or both players can force a draw. On an empty tic tac toe board, both players can force a draw, so the game is a theoretical draw.

In the game of Nim, there are no ties, so there is always one player in a position capable of forcing a win. I should have made it clear in my last statement that i was refering specifically to non-tie games, such as Pearls/Nim.

In addition, his argument was about the complexity involved in determining safe states, not the existence of them,

Yeah, sorry, i misread that.


By the way, in John's posts where he uses [ code ], some of his post is cut off.