Names for the number 0 in English the score was not placed upon a scoreboard, and there is scant evidence that the French ever used "l'oeuf" as the name for a zero score in the first place, that name being as anecdotal as the hypothesis that "love" is then derived from it. (Jacob Bernoulli, for example, in his "Letter to a Friend", used "à but" to describe the initial zero–zero score in court tennis, which in English is "love-all".) Some alternative hypotheses have similar problems. For example: The assertion that "love" comes from the Scots word "luff", meaning "nothing", falls at the first hurdle, because there is
Zero game Zero game In combinatorial game theory, the zero game is the game where neither player has any legal options. Therefore, under the normal play convention, the first player automatically loses, and it is a second-player win. The zero game has a Sprague–Grundy value of zero. The combinatorial notation of the zero game is: { | }. A zero game should be contrasted with the star game {0|0}, which is a first-player win since either player must (if first to move in the game) move to a zero game, and therefore win. Simple examples of zero games include Nim with no