An interesting chessboard game

Revision en3, by ko_osaga, 2017-11-22 21:08:06

In a n x m chessboard with cells labeled (i, j) for 1 ≤ i ≤ N, 1 ≤ j ≤ M, there is a stone at (1, 1). A and B is playing a game.

A starts first, and they alternately move stone to adjacent cell (north / west / south / east). It's okay to move stones to previously visited cells, but it's prohibited to move stones to previously visited "edges". For example, if someone wants to move stone from (1, 1) -> (1, 2), they shouldn't have a record of visiting (1, 1) / (1, 2) or (1, 2) / (1, 1) cells consecutively. Player unable to make a move loses.

Who is the winner? 1 ≤ n, m ≤ 106

About 1 month ago, me and other guys tried to solve this problem but failed. I also googled about this problem, but wasn't able to find any resources about it :/ Here are some observations to share.

Hint originally written in statement
Observation 1
Observation 2
Observation 3
Observation 4

Could anyone help me to solve this?

Tags games, math

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en3 English ko_osaga 2017-11-22 21:08:06 7
en2 English ko_osaga 2017-11-22 21:07:42 64
en1 English ko_osaga 2017-11-22 21:04:25 1629 Initial revision (published)