Kid-tested. The 7-year-old loves it. Thank you for saving me from plain-old Tic Tac Toe games with my kid.
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
111–120 of 129 posts
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#112What happens to the game if you switch order when you take a board?
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is called "Gomoku" (just on a quasi-infinite board): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku I used to play this a lot when I was still at the university
Yup, Gomoku is a much more difficult game than it looks. Indeed, the game is challenging enough that there is a world championship every odd year. You can find the games from the last world championship here: http://renju.net/media/games.php?gameid=45016 I am amazed by the fact that Gomoku can be so hard to master with rules so simple you can explain to a five year old. And unlike Chess where there are a hundred year…
Gomoku has already been solved actually, maybe you were thinking of Go? There's a revised version called Connect6 though, in case you are interested.
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#114I think the Orwin gambit can be extended to win the game every time. - Force opponent to fill center miniboard, as he describes. - Force opponent to fill (e.g.) northeast corner in the same way. Opponent now has taken two miniboards, and you have none, but you are one turn away from taking each of the remaining seven. - Pick SW corner of SW corner. You have taken SW corner miniboard. Opponent is forced to play in sam…
Here's an implementation that pretty much does exactly that. If someone can beat this bot, lemme know: https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/in-tic-tac-toe-ception-perfec... And here's James Irwin's original implementation, auto-set to a Monte-Carlo AI and with a rules variation that (to my knowledge) prevents Perfect Bot from winning. Play with the config variables at the top for some other AIs and 2-player games and whatn…
[deleted]
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#115I think the Orwin gambit can be extended to win the game every time. - Force opponent to fill center miniboard, as he describes. - Force opponent to fill (e.g.) northeast corner in the same way. Opponent now has taken two miniboards, and you have none, but you are one turn away from taking each of the remaining seven. - Pick SW corner of SW corner. You have taken SW corner miniboard. Opponent is forced to play in sam…
Here's an implementation that pretty much does exactly that. If someone can beat this bot, lemme know: https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/in-tic-tac-toe-ception-perfec... And here's James Irwin's original implementation, auto-set to a Monte-Carlo AI and with a rules variation that (to my knowledge) prevents Perfect Bot from winning. Play with the config variables at the top for some other AIs and 2-player games and whatn…
There are definitely bugs- I played the 2nd link and on several moves the AI moved in the wrong region. I played in the SW block in the E square and then the AI played in the same SW block as me, then did the same thing on the next turn playing in the wrong region.
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#116I think the Orwin gambit can be extended to win the game every time. - Force opponent to fill center miniboard, as he describes. - Force opponent to fill (e.g.) northeast corner in the same way. Opponent now has taken two miniboards, and you have none, but you are one turn away from taking each of the remaining seven. - Pick SW corner of SW corner. You have taken SW corner miniboard. Opponent is forced to play in sam…
Here's an implementation that pretty much does exactly that. If someone can beat this bot, lemme know: https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/in-tic-tac-toe-ception-perfec... And here's James Irwin's original implementation, auto-set to a Monte-Carlo AI and with a rules variation that (to my knowledge) prevents Perfect Bot from winning. Play with the config variables at the top for some other AIs and 2-player games and whatn…
Well, if the game would be changed to disallow 'moves' in won sections, you'd have a completely different game where this 'exploit' of opponent trapping does not work.
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#117When my dad was at university he made just out of curiosity a AI to play Tic Tac Toe that started knowing nothing about the game, and tried to learn from playing against the player, until it became impossible to beat it. Later someone complained with university administrators that my dad was "playing games" in the computer lab, and he got banned from it :/ But I guess this version might be even more interesting to ma…
The only winning move is not to play
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, Gomoku is a much more difficult game than it looks. Indeed, the game is challenging enough that there is a world championship every odd year. You can find the games from the last world championship here: http://renju.net/media/games.php?gameid=45016 I am amazed by the fact that Gomoku can be so hard to master with rules so simple you can explain to a five year old. And unlike Chess where there are a hundred year…
Gomoku has already been solved actually, maybe you were thinking of Go? There's a revised version called Connect6 though, in case you are interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6
Under free opening rules, Gomoku has been proved to be sure-win for black, aka the first player. This work done by Victor Allis could be part of the reason why Gomoku is undeservedly treated as a toy board game.
We have to remember, however, that this proof is computer search based. There was never an algorithm to find the best move given a random position. In other words, it only proves that these certain openings will guarantee black a win.
Those who loved the game came up with new opening rules. The world championships in 1989 and 1991 used the pro rule. After some evolutions, swap2 now became the standard. Under Gomoku swap2, the first player puts two black stones and one white stone on the board, and the second player can either pick one color, or puts two more stones and gives back the power to choose color to the first player.
I know about Connect6, and also a branch called Renju. But I find Gomoku more attractive. You should totally try it sometimes.
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#119My favorite Mathematics game is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Six
Mathematically fair
Re: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then according to the rules, X gets to move anywhere. Pick another corner board, make a move in the NW corner, which forces them back to the NW board. Then their best option is to move in the same square of the board you just came from, since you won't be able to send them back to the NW board again. In that case, you move in the same corner as the board you are in, forcing their reply to the same board you're playin…
After that it's pretty easy to force a win. Whatever square they send you to, you just send them back to one of those two squares.
I challenge you to a game where you are X then. Because I can't figure out how you force a win like that.