Tic-Tac-Toe (with Xs only) - Numberphile
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- čas přidán 25. 11. 2015
- Changing the rules of Tic-Tac-Toe to create interesting scenarios.
Featuring Thane Plambeck.
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What if you did it with only Os
-_-
Magic would happen and the 3rd person would win.
Then X would never win :)
Nothing changes, lol, it's the same as only X.
No it would be Os instead.
I used to play on a 4x4x4x4 board, took a bit of brainpower, so much that sometimes we'd only realise someone had won several moves after the fact.
+Scott Manley what are you doing here?
+Scott Manley Shouldn't you be flying spaceships?
+Scott Manley Wait, you really mean in four dimensional space? °-° xD
+Scott Manley I like how you use 4 dimensions
+Scott Manley Wtf, you played tesseract tic-tac-toe?
This is why Connect 4 is great. It is as simple as Noughts and Crosses/Tic-Tac-Toe but playable.
The best game like tic-taco-toe and connect 4 is gomoku which is 5 in a row on a go board. It's without a doubt what these games should be
I agree
but you have to buy it
Why? Draw on a sheet of paper and of you go!
Me and a mate Play connect 5 instead. You must play two pieces each turn
"strategic tic tac toe" is super fun, its a 3x3 set of 3x3 boards, and whatever tile you play In within a board (topright, bottomleft, middle, topmiddle etc.) dictates the board that your opponent plays in next. Otherwise, all boards act independent of one another and the objective is to win three whole boards in a row.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
+Alex Prescott do I see there a relation in this comment to suckerpinch's video about his playfunalgorythm? :D
Not intentionally, just a Wargames reference.
+Alex Prescott I wonder if there will be... cake..
*****
loool
***** always a relevant XKCD.
tbh i think this made tic tac toe even worse, not better.
+sasracer1 this video is actually a foundation for the next one, which ups the ante somewhat!
NUMBERPHILE HYPE!
+Numberphile I was hoping that's the case, since he presented the problem but didn't improve on it yet.
I wonder if a tic-tac-toe game with a "time dimension" would be cool... If you could place your move on a "past" board when that cell wasn't used yet.
Actually, I think it would be similar to the 3D game, but with a new "layer" appearing after each move...
+sasracer1 i think its just differently bad
+itai alter "ultimate tic tac toe" on steam has a different aproach to time, the board forgets your third ¿or fourth? move. so you have to plan keeping in mind that one move is going to dissapear.
I'ts interesting to play at the beggining, but if both players play perfectly it can end up with endless move loops
Despite the fact that tic-tac-to often ends up in a draw, it still has remained one of the most popular games through the generations. So, the person who invented it must have done something right.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky It's simple, that's pretty much it.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky all you need is to be able to draw. And there are many ways to do that. You don't need to have pieces or custom made boards to play. And also it doesn't take much space to play and has very low prep time (draw four lines -> done).
Of course you could draw a 8x8 board to play chess - but that requires the ability to erase or to have pieces. That limits the scenarios where you can play it. Other games may also need some sort of randomizer (dices, roulettes, etc..).
The only game I can thik that comes close to tic-tac-toe is that one where you have to draw sides in a square grid, and the point are for enclosing squares... but honestly I don't remember well the rules, not even the name of the game.... and you need to ensure that grid to start playing.
Are there other games that are as cheap as tic-tac-toe but are not variants of it? I wonder.
***** "3 5 7" only requires drawing.
littlebigphil Thanks. 3-5-7 seems to be a variant of Nim. I was previously unaware of Nim.
I was thinking of dots and boxes, btw.
That's what I thought of as well.
Recently, I did see two girls playing connect 4 on paper. It's perfectly possible, although it's not as fun when the pieces don't fall down, but you have to draw them at the lowest possible spot in the chosen column right away.
Great video. Let's convert a game that always results in a draw, into a game where the player that moves first always wins. Such a great solution.
ElGiganto17 shhhhhh
ElGiganto17 didn't even watch the whole video. Tsk tsk tsk
I feel that's already a problem of every game. First turn advantage is very important to deal with but no one knows how. I think second turn advantage for this new Tic Tac Toe is that they get to go twice on their second turn.
Obviously the end of the video must’ve been oblivious to you, some how.
He said the problem was that you could draw in the game, and he fixed said problem. He fixed the wrong problem, but the solution is perfectly fine for the problem he chose to solve
I mean we could flip a coin instead
it can't end on its side if you catch the coin
If heads i win, if tails you lose
Now its a game of luck
@@complxgd4060 But it would be a game you could win
Let's make it more interesting, let's flip coins on misere mode
My favorite version of tic tac toe (which I usually only play with my little siblings to help them pass the time while waiting for our food to come) is where you still have Xs and Os, but one person has the goal of drawing the game, while the other person has the goal of either winning OR losing. There are still strategies where, once you know them, you'll always win, but they're much less obvious as even now I've forgotten them. Makes for a fun 5 or so games until we run out of room on the kids menu.
I'll be fully honest, this makes the game way worse. the game is over after the first move
+rararawr619 this video is building towards the next one (but I found this one pretty interesting myself)
just like a regular tic tac toe, depending on the second play you have already determined the game
+rararawr619 the game was always over in one move. The problem with this game is that you can analyse every situation because the board is so small
+rararawr619 in tic tac toe, the game is over as soon as it's begun
+Pedro Gusmão next time you better read what he says. he said the game is over after the FIRST move not that it could be over after any move. in comparison with conventional tic tac toe, this variation takes even less skill than the previous.
Chess knights just got a little cooler. :D
+ChessNetwork Hey!
+ChessNetwork I was thinking of you when he mentioned the knight ;)
+ChessNetwork On an infinite grid of identical 1-ohm resistors, what is the equivalent resistance between two nodes that are a Chess Knight's move apart from one another?
carultch
Nerd-sniping is fun.
no u
I play it on a 16x16+ board and the first person to get 5 in a row wins.
+Jozef T. I usually play 5 in a row, tic tac toe, with unlimited space (it honestly doesn't take that much space)
No chance for draw
+Ewan F I played that so much in maplestory! Haha
Khanh Duong Phan no, someone always wins, but never had match last more than 5 minutes, its quite easy to make 5 row, trick is to trick the other player, sooner or later one will have 4 line (and it's impossiple to block it, if not already blocked) or 2 times 3 line, if other player blocks one of them you turn the other into 4 line
also as the game becomes bigger, you quite easily miss a line from somewhere
+Jozef T. I play it on a enough x enough board. If the paper runs out, we just take another one :D
+Jozef T. we use "infinetely" large paper to play with five in a row... In my county i've got the third place in it :D out of a thousand :D
This game might have removed "certain draw" strategy, but instead added "certain victory", favouring the first player even more as a result. It's a bit tricky to pull it off for sure, but is it really an improvement from the original?
Except that in tick tack toe, the first player can also always win or draw
Right, but certain victory is still there, which is inevitable I guess in such a simple matrix. To paraphrase my original question, did the game become fairer?
+Omagari Toshi You do realise that in a perfect information game one player will always have a certain winning strategy, or perfect strategies will always lead to draws? What you are saying is trivial.
+jamma246 Yeah but the trick is to make games complicated enough so that we (humans) cannot see far enough to find the strategies.
+jamma246 Assuming both know the game perfectly (which is still easy in the new game), the victory solely depends on the chance of which gets to tick first. Games like four stones is complex enough to hide this, but in here the improvement seems marginal. In fact I am not sure if I call it improvement, because perfect game guarantees the lucky one to win now.
huuuur, the sound of the marker on this paper makes me shiver every time
tic-tac-toe on "infinite" board is a nice game
+fritt wastaken Yea, tic-tac-toe on an "infinite" board with whoever to get 5 in a row first is the game I always play - though often against myself...
Still, it is quite interesting
+EdwardBerner That's called Gomoku
+EdwardBerner
An AI does exist for that variant, but it's no fun because if you don't understand the AI's logic, it's impossible to win, but once you do, it's trivial to win.
3 in a row on an infinite 2D board would always lead to a player 1 victory: X plays first at (0,0) WLOG. Wherever O plays, X plays non-parallel to the direction O's move is to (0,0) and adjacent to (0,0). That leaves two possible moves for victory on X's next turn, a situation from which O cannot escape.
all I'm thinking is playing this game on a 4×4 grid (or any n×n where n is even). Because this eliminates a center square, and gives you not 1 but 4 positions that aren't in the perimeter, thus giving you a bigger number of opening moves that won't ultimately doom you
+Nikolaj Lepka Try Gomoku
Prosthetic
odd number though, means it has a center starting point
+Nikolaj Lepka In standard Tic Tac Toe the optimal opening move is actually the corner.
+Nikolaj Lepka Doesn't improve a thing though. The actual main problem with the game is far too few possible different games. 4x4 helps, but the real way to make game interesting is to put it in infinite grid and require 5 marks in a row.
+Nikolaj Lepka It's a 19x19 board though. Having a centre square doesn't really matter.
I love the variant where it's nine small tic tac toe grids on a larger tic tac toe grid. The square you fill on the smaller grid sends your opponent to the corresponding square of the larger grid to play. It starts simple but gets very tricky very quickly.
Add a third layer.
& whoever wins on the small grid wins that square of the large grid, you have to win the large grid to win. Played this a lot in the math department during undergrad
"playing to lose" is a simple house rule that makes a lot of games very interesting
My brother and I used to play misere mode with x's and o's, we called it tic-tac-no.
🦄
Archangel Mykal didn't you get a lot of draws? The spaces are so few that i don't feel you can force the opponent to get 3 in a row...
The variant with the 4x4 board seems interesting (though my intuition tells me the 1st player has an advantage), or there's one variant where only 3 pieces are allowed per player, and starting with move 7 they get to move them - iirc this wouldn't get any draws either.
I just play in 3 corners.
If you can pull it off, you win every time.
+Brendan Risney Yep, only real way to win is to put X in one of the corners ad hope that opponent won't put O in the center, and then you win.
T0PGUNGE0 Nah, put an x in 3 corners, then you have up to 3 ways to win in one turn. They're screwed.
x o o
x x o
x x x
see?
+Brendan Risney Sorry but your ratio of x's and o's are off, o can still block the x's if you catch on quick enough.
Rory Dakin I know, I was just using the o's to show the other squares. You only need 3 x's then the fourth will win.
+T0PGUNGE0 you just have to put x in the center and hope the enemy doesn't move into the corner and you've won
There are doctors curing deseases, physicists building spaceships, and then there are mathematicians improving tic tak toe ...
+kikfred The reason all these sciences can "express" themselves and get evolved is that mathematicians throughout the time did these "useless" improvements and experiments.
+kikfred "improving" is relative in this case ...
Hey, Game Theory has a lot of useful applications in a whole bunch of different areas.
+kikfred There are two types of true mathematics; pure and applied. Applied is stuff like finding cures and making inventions, while pure is just for fun and just to find discoveries, like this for example
+ThatEpicDude Everything discovered can have an application.
"beat a small child. Anybody competent can draw" Best out of context line ever.
Well great we remove draws and instead make the game depend on a coinflip (who goes first) when people are even slightly competent.
Sure made the game better /s
Awesome! It's so thrilling to see group theory emerging here, beyond the game itself. I mean, the "winning moves" or whatever can be understood as a set with certain elements and properties (a group, maybe?). I enjoyed this one! Great work!
So essentially, not only is tic-tac-toe a solved game, but ANY variants that remove ties, mean that the first player always wins provided he plays his first move correctly. So this game is completely pointless forever.
+Chris Polkas see the next video
+Chris Polkas No.
Every finite game of complete information has a solution (even chess). This is a theorem by Ernst Zermelo (1913). What makes complicated games interesting is that we are not smart enough to find find the solution.
So far, they've managed to make a game that's pretty much exactly the same and just as determinable. We'll see what the next video is about.
I don't see how this makes it any more enjoyable.
Ultimate tic-tac-toe is pretty fun
+CaptainMack1 Agreed, this gives so much more tactical insight.
I really like Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. I love how it starts out like just Tic Tac Toe but with nine boards, and then becomes more and more tense and tactical as options start to close off.
I always play 4x4x4 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe with up to 3 other friends. It creates some tense games!
+TheBlueToad! Love that game! Always fun to see their faces when they realize you have them trapped in three different ways.
I always try to trick my friends into thinking that I'm doing one thing, when secretly, I'm actually setting up other winning situations.
You can play nought n crosses, or tic tack toe, with numbers. The idea is to have the numbers from 1-9, and the first player can choose any number and put it anywhere on the grid, each number can only be used once. The object of the game is to make three numbers in a row, column, or diagonal, add up to 15. I think it's based on the magic square.
Best way to win is to start in the corner, never the center
I don't get the point of this game. Creating a game that always ends in a draw is kinda like creating a game that always ends in the situation that the beginner wins.
+1996Pinocchio stay tuned!
Actually putting your piece on any 3 corners usually ends up with you winning. Bcause you have 3 options to win the game, and assuming he only canceled 2 of those options and it's your turn you win whoahoa.
Would you like to play a game of chess?
I really like this guy! Would enjoy more videos featuring him
theres something called "ultimate tic-tac-toe"...
it has 9 cells, within each 1 of the 9 cells are 9 cells (like 9 sections each with 9 cells), you start at the center, you choose a cell, the cell you chose (for say the left cell of the middle section), will mirror on where your opponent goes next (left cell? left section, top right cell? top right section), and the process repeats, if someone makes 3 in a row in a section, they get the whole section, but then the other player gets to go wherever they want to (whichever section and cell they want to), this is one of my favorite games and I'd love to hear numberphile talk about it
Numberphile: solving problems nobody actually has
What I've always played, we have 3 pieces each, and when all pieces are placed you move one of them.
That's what I thought it was everywhere.
I think originally that was how it was played
If the players know what they're doing, the game never ends, unless someone eventually makes a mistake because of fatigue.
I've always played it like that as well
Just imagining, 'Misere Mario'. If you get to the end and the princess kills you. I suppose the goombas would give you health, falling down holes would give you extra lives, and you'd have to dodge all of the coins. Of course, mushrooms would have to make you smaller......
Except for the mini-mushroom. That one would make you massive.
Tic tac toe doesn't have to end by a draw since you can start 2 rows by predicting the next move.
A well known example of this is when someone starts in a corner then plays another one witch gives him the chance to have 2 uncompleted rows and winning since the opponent can only block one.
Simple and great variations!
Perfect to discuss strategy with young students :-)
Love his eyes!
What if the board looped around on both sides like a torus? You might need more than a 3x3 for that though.
Tic-Tac-Toe made out of Tic-Tac-Toes is the best solution.
Tic-tac-ception
Tic Tac Toe is solved, so lets make a more complicated game that isn't. *Proceeds to solve new game entirely*
The possibility of a draw does not make the game boring. The fact that the game is completely analyzed and the outcome is effectively fixed makes the game boring.
@lessur dgreat every game has finite results...
Under 314 views - In the pi club!
This is the pi club, have some pie.
Yeah this is awesome!
I rather be in the tau club, they accept twice as much cool kids than the stinky pi club :p (And we get two pies each)
+Revodon3s What flavour has it ?
+ThatEpicDude Just because you only remember three digits doesn't mean Pi is 3.14. Everybody is in the 'under 31,415,926 club'.
Normal tic tac toe is bad because a certain of moves will guarantee a draw, so instead lets play a different version, where in this case a certain set of moves will guarantee victory. WOW great job!
A slightly more interesting variation is where each player has their own board, both play X at the same time without seeing where the other is playing, and then copy the opponent's X to the same position on their own board as an O before the next turn. So for example if both players play the first move in the center, then both boards would end up with both an X and an O in the center, as a sort of superposition of states. If one then plays upper left while the other plays upper right, one board would have X+O in the center, X in the upper left, and O in the upper right, while the other board would have X+O in the center, X in the upper right, and O in the upper left. The only sensible move at that point for either player would be to place their X in the bottom corner that completes an X row, making that player the winner. Of course, if they both do that, you have two winners.If you were to place your X in the position where the other player would have to move in order to win, it would not block them on that turn and they would win anyway... but then you would not. Of course, it's still just tin-tac-toe. Chess played this way is MUCH more interesting. :)
This game is as weak as tic-tac-toe. As the X and O version, you define who is going to win with the first movement.
+Marcos Vinícius Petri the point was to remove draws from the game
+reorx9 Which made it worse, actually. The draw is the only way to prevent a sure lost.
+Marcos Vinícius Petri Agreed. The Draw is the major strength of Tic Tac Toe, not a weakness.
i believe it was more of a conceptual thing that "you can do this but if you do it doesn't necessarily make it better/more interesting" type of thing instead of a this is better, do this type of video.
+sasracer1 It is a weakness because if two players play correctly the game ALWAYS ends with a draw. It's inevitable. And when you play something you don't want to draw, you want to win and Tic Tac Toe, because of the possibility of draw, makes it impossible. That's why in my opinion the draw is a huge weakness.
Whats interesting here? It is as boring as always having a draw. It's predictable, the curse of Tic-tac-toe
srinesh shenoi not exactly. it depends on when you are playing the game. its always fun for young kids and there are winners. that is, until you get older and experienced and figure it out. aww the pains of leaving childhood right?
meesalikeu I play mental tic tac toe with my friends. It becomes easier to make mistakes and it’s interesting again. I play ultimate tic tac toe a lot.
Tic Tac Toe can be fun. This guy just didn’t know how to do it.
The curse of a knowlegde based game without rng.
Play tic tac toe 5 in a row
Edit : you now with 10x10 grid
Great transformation of a game that’s easy to draw (no pun intended) into a game that’s easy to win!
This reminds me of another adaptation that uses the numbers 1 thru 9 (also on CZcams). The point is to add up the three in a row to 15. That game has a restriction: can't start with 5 in the middle. The restriction for this game could be you can't start with the X in the middle. Otherwise, the first person always seems to win.
4:56
him: middle is the only other possibility
edges: I am a joke to you??
The problem with all of these games is that going first is so powerful that it loses you the game on the spot.
No idea why this was recommended to me, but since it was I had to watch it LOL
the first person in tic-tac-toe CAN always win, with the normal rules
This game will never be fun.
in the VERY short discovery phase, when you are figuring it out, it is fun.
as soon as you are past that, then it will never be fun again.
lots of games are like that, but tic tac toe is unique in how insanely short it is.
Deep bro , really deep
the sound of the marker makes me cringe, like nails on a chalkboard, but even worse to me. Which is kind of a drag, cause I love these videos...
Obi-Wan Kannabis that’s all I could think about the whole video
nOpIsX I thought I was the only who hated the touch of paper.. I hated it just..idk I kidda like the sound if markers going across paper but I dont like when I touch paper like on my forearm...but..
For me it’s kind of like a love-hate relationship.
Space SurR Yes, paper is able to give me the chills.
Obi-Wan Kannabis j
“You may be able to beat a small child” 😂😂😂
The best, really strategic game of tic-tac-toe, is where you need to connect 5 in an infinite space to win.
I think chess is better.
ImmaterialDigression Chess is better,ofc.It actually has tactics and it does not condtantly end in a draw.Also,chess,unlike tic-tac-toe can be used to practise your brain.
orandza 023 only way chess can be a draw is if it’s stalemate
orandza023
I almost had a seizure from reading that.
Chiz Kin
You are very misinformed.
How is this better? You can definitely tell who wins the game even before it starts.
In high school we used to play a game we referred to as Tic-Tac-Toe-Tah. Any number of players could play (assuming you could devise distinguishable symbols for each). We would go in turn putting down our symbols, such that no one put down more than one symbol before everyone else put down a symbol in that round. The goal was to get three of your symbols in a row. On your turn, you could either place one of your symbols in a space, or you could add a row or a column to the matrix.
my favourite tic tac toe is on (almost) unlimited space, where you have to make 5 symbols in a row
its much more entertaining than the 3x3 version
Lol.. The Dutch actually call it 'Butter, Cheese and Eggs'. :P
+Sander Kamp Lol, what a strange name.
Actually, there are tactics to win at default Tic Tac Toe via making a situation where you have two spots to win in one turn. And it's always fun to pull them off when playing someone, because they're caught off guard so easily.
You did it. You transformed a funny game into a boring game.
I remember me and my mum play a 10x10 tic tac toe and do a 5 line combos, best game ever
We played it on an infinite by infinite "board", well technically not infinite but only bound by the limitation of the paper we had in our notebooks. The goal is to get 5 in a row. It's a really fun and interesting game.
i tried to play tic tac toe only with my Exes. It didnt end as well as I'd like to admit.
Pun.
Basically, everything will be decided on the first move.
That made the game even worse, gg.
RᴀɪɴDᴇᴠᴏᴜʀ well, if you know how to play tic-tac-toe , the first move always decides the game
@@maticich4761 Well, second player's first move, but yeah.
@@CameronSMoore not really, if we assume both players know what they're doing and do the optimal move after the first turn. P1 had only 3 options for his first move Corner, Side and Center, Side means P2 wins the other two will result in a draw
I love this channel. Congrats from Brazil. =)
At a camp I went to, we played a game known simply as "the rock game." We would take an odd number of rocks off the ground and set them in a line. You can take 1, 2, or 3 rocks from the line, slowly decreasing the amount of rocks left. The other person could do the same, and whoever took the last rock lost. After playing for a while, I noticed that if you left the other person 5 rocks you would always win. Which meant if you left him 9 rocks you would win as well, and so on increasing by 4. It was a way to beat campers who didn't know about the game, but anyone who did know the "secret" was basically a futile match. Who won the match depended on the odd number with which we started and the person who went first, and relied not on strategy. I tried changing the premise by changing the starting number to an even one, but anyone who knew the original strategy could easily figure that one out. I tried making it so who took the last rock won, which I won at for a while, but not for long. Is there any way this game could be made more complex as to not take the fun out of it?
How about you "roll" the game into a cylinder. That way there is no ties.
Debajyoti Das sure I'll just go and get my book of circular paper then and not look conspicuous at the back of the class at all
I mean, you can play on a regular paper and just keep track of the cylinder mentally. Left connect to right, and vice versa.
Make it top connecting to down, and you'll be playing on an imaginary "spherical" paper.
+Kellogg
Connecting left to right would indeed create a cylinder, but if you then connect top to bottom, you would get a torus (donut), not a sphere.
Imagine the process for turning an atlas into a globe. You connect east to west, but you don't connect north to south. Instead you connect the north edge to itself by shrinking it to a single point (and the same for the south edge). A simple way to do this with a tic-tac-toe board would be to turn the top row into upwards pointing triangles, and then connecting their edges thus causing their tips to connect as well (and then mirroring that process for the bottom row). This would connect everything in a manner equivalent to a sphere, but it would make it difficult to define how the top row is connected across the top point: just horizontally, or also vertically and/or diagonally. If it's only connected horizontally it would work fine, but it would be functionally identical to the cylinder-board. I would define it to be connected across the top diagonally in the obvious direction so that this is a winning diagonal:
_XX
X_ _
_ _ _
Thoughts?
explain 2048 game.
I really enjoyed this.. haha thanks
I always found tic tac toe interesting as the only game, where ignorance in both players is the only strategy you can do to win
Number the squares 1-9 and play normal tic tac toe but you play at the same time with your opponent by telling a moderator where you will go ahead of time. If you both pick the same number then you redo
You need more rules than that. In many cases there is only one optimal position on the board. Unless you want to repeat the picking of spaces ad infinatum between stubborn players, you need to say that if both pick a spot then neither can pick that spot until new spots have been chosen. You then have to make rules dealing with when this system results in an insufficient number of eligible spots...
You are not supposed to start at the center!!!
jaja you can start where you want
orandza023 start in a corner and if they choose center then do the complete opposite corner and they normally respond by putting an o/x in the corner then put it in the last corner and you soft locked them in a checkmate
Draws are only prevalent if you choose the center tile. If you choose both corners, they’ll block the center, then make another corner and you’ll have 2 potential wins
I use to teach Maths, and we would play WILD tic tac toe... you could be an X or O on any move regardless of what your first move was. Then we would switch it up and play WILD toe tac tic, 3 in a row and you lose. It was a great way to start the year and get kids to think about math as something more than just algorithms and appreciate the idea of thinking instead of copying.
You made a pretty similar game. Whoever moves first will always win. Just like tic tac toe
no in tic tac toe its always a draw
Ryan Holcomb lol
Fite me
I’ll beat you
I like playing Ultimate Tic Tac Toe - A 9x9 square board split into nine 3x3 sections where you have to win a game in three adjacent sections to win the game.
My favourite method is this:
Draw a large tic tac toe board, and in each of the 9 cells, draw another smaller tic tac toe board. The first player may chose any square and any cell to make the first play in (except the middle middle, which will be apparent as to why if you play it). Whichever cell of the small board that the first player played in, the second player must make a move in the corresponding large cell. (so if player 1 plays in the middle board in the top left cell, then the second player must play in the top left board, but can choose any cell).
When a board is won it is marked with the players symbol, and the game ends when either player has won three boards in a row. In my experience draws in this game is very rare, and you usually need to think many steps ahead to win the game.
We used to play a version of Tic-Tac-Toe with moving stones. When all three stones was placed you could move one stone to an adjacent square, until one player eventually won the game. After 5 wins, the player lost a stone, but claimed a square that you could move from.
Nice variation of tic-tac-toe is trying to make a row of 5 on an endless game field
Thanks Chandler
We used to play it in the elementary school using small rocks and bottle caps.
You have only three rocks or three caps. The interesting part here is that you can move your pieces like a chess game and that will prevent drawing and provide an interesting game.
Greetings from Saudi Arabia
Outstanding move
The best way to play tic-tac-toe is to use a 3x3x3 board. There are two players, but instead of just x and o, you use x, o, v, and z. The first player wins by getting three xs or vs in a row while the 2nd players wins by getting three os or zs in a row. You have to play, taking turns, alternating between your two letters. It's a bit hard to imagine the winning combinations at first, but it's a lot of fun!
I used to play with some friends on an infinite board(math graph paper) and whoever makes the first 5x/o would win.
this is a game where you just told us how to always win, wow so fun..
It is amazing how the idea of opposition, zugzwang and knight movement applies here
I used to play a special version of the tictac toe back in highschool. It was on an infinite board and the one who had 5 in a row won. It was really intense to play haha and if you played enough, you started to see patterns and at that moment it was such a powerful feeling xD At the beggining when me and my friend 'invented' it, we were the only ones playing. But as the time passed others started joining and soon half of the class got involved. It was so addicting
Tic Tac Toe Ception: Draw one big tic-tac-toe board and then draw 9 smaller ones in each box. The first move can be made in any of the smaller boards, but from then on the opposing player must move in the board contained on the larger board that matches the slot last played in. So if player 1 moves in the center of any of the 9 boards, player two MUST move in the center board on the next turn. When a board is won, that player claims that square on the larger board. The game is won when one player gets 3 in a row on the larger board.
This is probably the most tactically deep variation of Tic Tac Toe. It is deceptively simple. There are 81 spaces, meaning there are now 81 tactically diverse opening moves, and while the symmetry problem still exists, the added complexity means the game is no longer trivial to solve. Adults can enjoy playing together without easily finding gambits that can't be beaten.
+William Brall Recursive Tic-Tac-Toe is no more complex than regular Tic-Tac-Toe; it actually reduces trivially to the original 3x3 game. Let's imagine a 9x9 nested Tic-Tac-Toe board. In the case of two competent players, they'll just force a draw in every square, and the game will be over. In the case that I play first and force a win, next it's your turn, and you can do the exact same in another subgrid. So if whoever plays first wins, then the subgames are meaningless -- I simply choose which subgrid I want to win, and we play until you lose, and then it's your turn -- in other words, it's 3x3 Tic-Tac-Toe. If the games always draw, then the overall game is unsatisfactory. And if both players are so unskilled that the subgames could go either way, then you're no better off than you were playing normal Tic-Tac-Toe. So you've not actually added any strategy, you're just playing the exact same game -- and the exact same gambit -- several times over.
William Brall
Ah, I misunderstood that part. Yes, that would definitely deepen the strategy a bit.
Basically, the center square is the best square to play no matter what.
Normal tic tac toe: draw or win
Misere mode all X's: win
this game is so simple that the whole game-tree fits in my brain's memory, so no point playing after placing the first mark because I can tell whether I win or not
If you play regular tic tac toe, you should always takes the corner. In confusion, the opponent will choose the center. From the, you take the opposite corner (yes the one aligned with the center. Now if your opponent takes the corner, you win. Just place your sign on the other corner, and you create two three possibilites. The fact this way of winning is not mentioned, makes me think this video makers don’t understand how to tic tac toe.
U forget that by placing the first move in one corner, and placing his next move in the opposite corner, followed by the third move in either of the remaining corners, a win is inevitable
You gave us a better tic tac toe and told us how to ruin it
Thanks
Player 1 can always win if they play the center square and player 2 opens in any other square that isn't a corner. Still surprises me how many adults don't know or forget this