Show HN: Boxes

it's back! new servers tomorrow.

This isn't twitter, and threaded comments are supported.

Current thoughts on strategy:

You shouldn't care how you are affecting your opponent's board (you are affecting it randomly). So just play for your own board.

On an empty board:

  The centre square is the most valuable, crossing 4 lines
  The diagonals are also valuable, crossing 3 lines
  All the other squares are equally not-valuable, crossing 2 lines.
  However - the squares change their value (a lot) depending on what your opponent plays.

A good strategy is therefore to wait and see what your opponent plays, then greedily collect the lines that they nearly fill in by random chance.

To acheive this... fill the valuable squares: centre and diagonals, while your opponent fills other places randomly. I guess they are doing the same.

Once you're done with the diagonals: fill the line which is most close to completed. This does not require too much thought - once you start filling a line, it's nearly always right to keep filling it.

You can break ties between lines, where necessary, by looking at which crossing lines are nearly filled.

Although the robot has the advantage of seeing what the player plays, I believe the first move outweighs this advantage (especially on the larger boards?)

Fun! But why is the AI done server-side? So slow!