We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in a booth at a diner, or maybe you’re stuck in a waiting room with nothing but a crinkled napkin and a dying pen. You draw those four lines—two horizontal, two vertical—and suddenly you’re locked in a high-stakes battle. It feels like a duel. But here’s the thing: most people treat game play tic tac toe like a game of chance, hoping their opponent just stops paying attention for a second. That’s actually a terrible way to play.
It’s a solved game.
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I don't mean "solved" in a casual way. I mean mathematically, if both people know what they’re doing, the game will always, without fail, end in a draw. This is what theorists call a "zero-sum game" with perfect information. Since there are only 255,168 possible game states—which sounds like a lot until you realize a modern computer can crunch that in a microsecond—there is no room for mystery. Yet, we keep playing. We keep teaching it to kids. Why? Because it’s the first time our brains actually grapple with combinatorial logic without realizing we’re doing homework.
The First Move is Everything (And Usually Wrong)
Most people instinctively go for the center. It makes sense, right? It feels powerful. You’re in the middle of the action, touching four possible winning lines. If you take the center and your opponent is playing casually, you’ve got a decent shot.
But if you’re playing against someone who actually understands the grid, the corner is your best friend. Seriously. Starting in a corner is the only way to set a trap that an average player can't escape. When you take a corner, you’re forcing the other person to respond perfectly. If they don't take the center immediately after you take a corner, they’ve already lost. They just don't know it yet. It’s a slow-motion car crash.
Let’s look at the math for a second. There are three basic opening positions: the corner, the edge, and the center. While the center is the most common, the corner offers the highest "branching factor" for mistakes. If you place your X in a corner and your opponent puts their O anywhere except the center, you can guarantee a win. You just have to follow the fork.
A "fork" is the holy grail of game play tic tac toe. It’s when you create two ways to win simultaneously. Your opponent can only block one. You take the other. Boom. Game over.
Why Computers Love This Game
Back in 1952, a guy named Sandy Douglas wrote a program called OXO for the EDSAC computer. It was one of the first video games ever created. He wasn't trying to make a billion dollars or start a gaming empire; he was just trying to prove that a machine could understand logic. Since then, tic-tac-toe has been the "Hello World" of Artificial Intelligence.
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If you’re learning to code today, you’ll probably build a version of this. You’ll use something called the Minimax algorithm. It’s basically a way for the computer to look ahead at every possible move, assign a value to it (1 for a win, -1 for a loss, 0 for a draw), and then choose the move that minimizes the maximum possible loss. It’s pessimistic programming. The computer assumes you are a genius who will always make the best move, so it plays for the draw.
It’s kinda fascinating that something so simple can teach a machine how to "think" about strategy. But for humans, it’s different. We get bored. We get distracted. We see a shiny object and forget that we need to block the bottom row. That’s where the fun lives—in human error.
The Variants That Actually Make You Think
If you find the standard 3x3 grid boring, you’re not alone. Once you realize it’s a draw, the magic wears off a bit. That’s why people invented "Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe."
Imagine a 3x3 grid, but every single square in that grid is another small tic-tac-toe board. To win a square on the big board, you have to win the small game inside it. But here’s the kicker: the move you make in the small game determines which small board your opponent has to play in next. If you send them to a board they’ve already won, they get a "wildcard" move. It’s chaotic. It’s brilliant. It turns a "solved" game into a deep strategic nightmare that feels more like chess.
There’s also "Notakto," which is a version where both players use the same symbol (both are X). The goal is to avoid making three in a row. The first person to complete a line loses. It flips your brain upside down because you’re spent years trying to build lines, and now you’re trying to avoid them like the plague.
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Cultural Weight of the Grid
We’ve seen this game in movies like WarGames (1983), where the supercomputer Joshua realizes that "the only winning move is not to play." That scene actually did a lot for the public understanding of game theory. It showed that some problems aren't about winning; they're about recognizing the futility of the system.
But even before Hollywood, the game was everywhere. The Romans played a version called Terni Lapilli. They didn't have paper, so they carved the grids into stone. You can still see them today in ancient ruins. Their version was slightly different—each player only had three pieces, and once they were on the board, you had to move them around. It was more like a simplified version of Three Men’s Morris.
Getting Better at Game Play Tic Tac Toe
If you want to stop drawing and start winning, you need to memorize a few "if-then" scenarios. It’s not cheating; it’s just knowing the landscape.
- If you go first: Take a corner. If they don't take the center, you win. If they do take the center, take the opposite corner. Now you have two corners. If they take an edge, you can set up a fork.
- If you go second: If they take a corner, you must take the center. If you don't, you lose. If they take the center, you take a corner.
- The Edge Trap: Never start on an edge. It’s the weakest opening move because it only supports one row and one column. No diagonals. You’re basically giving the game away.
Honestly, the real skill isn't in the moves themselves, but in the psychological pressure. People play faster when they think they’re winning. They get cocky. They stop scanning the whole board. If you can stay calm and keep your "search tree" open, you’ll never lose a game again. You might draw a lot, but you won't lose.
What to Do Next
The best way to appreciate the logic of the game is to try it under pressure. Go find a version of "Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe" online or draw it out. It’ll break your brain for the first ten minutes, but it makes the standard 3x3 game feel like a warmup exercise. If you’re feeling really nerdy, look up the "Minimax algorithm" and try to map out a game tree by hand. It’s a great way to understand how AI decision-making works in more complex games like Go or Chess.
Stop playing for the center every time. Start playing for the fork. The next time you’re stuck in that diner with a napkin, you’ll actually have a plan instead of just doodling.