Winning at Nim: computers outwitting humans

The game of Nim, derived from a Chinese game called Tsyanshidzi or "picking stones", is one of the first games where an "electronic brain" or "Artificial Intelligence" was able to consistently beat humans. At the 1939 World Exhibition in New York, the Nimatron, a Nim playing robot won 90 000 games out of the 100 000 it played. In 1951 a second computer called Nimrod was exhibited at the Festival of Britain and the Berlin Trade Fair. According to Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science it was so popular that people ignored the free beer (in Berlin!!!...though the beer was English beer, I suppose). The beer was at the other end of the same room but people instead watched the "electronic brain" beat its human competitors. In part the excitement was caused because on the first day Nimrod had beaten Ludwig Erhard, the German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, three times in a row. The age of computers outwitting humans had started.

Our Hamster Nim plays in the same way - can you do better than a Minister and beat it?

50 years later computers can now routinely beat humans at many games including chess, leading to the famous quote of world chess champion Garry Kasporov's, arguably the best human chess player ever, "I'm not afraid to admit that I'm afraid". Chess-playing program, Deep Blue's win against him was the first time a computer had beaten the human World chess champion ever in a tournament rules game.