Who Has The Win?
Since Sprouts is a finite game where no draw is possible, a perfect strategy exists either for the first or the second player, depending on the number of initial spots. The main question about a given starting position is then to determine which player can force a win if he plays perfectly.
When the winning strategy is for the first player, it is said that the outcome of the position is a "win", and when the winning strategy is for the second player, it is said that the outcome of the position is a "loss" (because it is a loss from the point of view of the first player).
The outcome is determined by developing the game tree of the starting position. This can be done by hand only for a small number of spots, and all the new results since 1990 have been obtained by extensive search with computers.
Read more about this topic: Sprouts (game)