Objective: Players take turns drawing one line between two adjacent dots. Completing the fourth side of a box claims that box for you — and gives you another turn immediately. When the board is full, whoever owns more boxes wins.
Difficulty levels:
- Easy: The computer plays casually and often gives boxes away
- Medium: The computer takes free boxes and avoids handing you easy ones
- Advanced: The computer also weighs its losses — when forced to give boxes away, it gives up as few as possible
The key concept — chains: Late in the game, most boxes connect into chains. Adding a third side to any box in a chain hands your opponent the whole chain, because each completed box grants another turn. Winning play is about counting chains and controlling who is forced to open the first one.
Tips:
- Early on, avoid drawing the third side of any box — those are free gifts
- Count the safe moves left; whoever runs out of safe moves first has to open a chain
- When you must give a chain away, give the shortest one — the Advanced computer plays this way, so beating it requires learning it
- On larger boards, try to split the board into an odd or even number of chains in your favor — that's the deep strategy of the game