Baku's Handchopper calculations

In the handchopper game, there is a loop that begins with hand positions (1, 4) for player 1 (black) and (3, 2) for player 2 (white). We'll just call this loop the "1432 loop" for short. This loop is special because the first person who breaks the loop will lose. Notice how it is white's turn to move at the beginning of the loop. This is important later. This page suggests that Baku goes through ALL of the possible game states permutationally, which basically means that he explores every game state by deriving every possible game state from a given state. ________________ The manga only shows us the first 3 rounds, but we know that Baku does use this permutational method at least until he finds the 1432 loop AND the consequences for the person who breaks the loop. To that end, a Python script was created to go through every game state permutationally, simulating the calculations Baku had to go through before the game. Now, these two images are the results of running the handchopper program that counts all of the game states cumulatively for every turn. The left photo shows in which turns does the loop appear in, and the right photo shows how many cumulative game states Baku calculates through for each turn. So for example, if Baku went through the game permutationally for the first 8 turns, he would've gone through 1,973 game states. If 13 turns, then 180,617 game states. Etc. Then we only need to establish when Baku stops calculating. The script can be found here: …