Friday, June 12, 2009

Three in a Row

A handful of posts ago, I wrote about how every competitive game can, in part, be traced to Rock Paper Scissors. Recently I found myself locked in combat in a certain game, and it struck me then that I may have failed to acknowledge that game as the other base competitve game patriarch - or matriarch, if you will; Tic Tac Toe.

Tic Tac Toe is, for all intents and purposes, the shittiest excuse for a game this side of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Everyone knows how to play TTT; simply get three of your mark, X or O, in a row on a 3x3 grid, and you win. And as you likely know, Tic Tac Toe has been solved. What this means is, it is possible to ensure a win or draw for yourself, regardless of what your opponent does, starting from the beginning of a game. And if you sat down for ten minutes tops, you too could solve Tic Tac Toe (if you haven't already). If you play first, your best move is any corner square; if your opponent doesn't respond by taking the center, you have won. If you play second, the best you're likely to do is a draw even against unknowing players, so just play to not lose and avoid maximum shame.

Now, TTT is one of the first games you teach your kids; it's not designed to be a competitive game. Still, it's important to note that someone playing TTT for the very first time has zero percent chance of beating someone who has the maximum knowledge of the game, someone who has solved it. The newcomer might luckily or intuitively fight his way to a draw, but that's the best he could hope for. And in games with more complex rulesets, the further away a possible human solving sits, and the more likely it is that the player who is more knowledgable within the system will win.

Tic Tac Toe can be forced by both players into a draw, Connect Four is a guaranteed win for whoever plays first, and Checkers is also technically a game that ends in a draw. Computers are still working to solve games like Chess, Othello, and Go, with some partial success. Computers, however, will never be able to solve Rock Paper Scissors (harrdy harr); bringing in that distinctly human guessing / prediction element. Both knowledge and prediction are integral in successful competitive games; and the most basic examples of those two concepts are easily found in Tic Tac Toe and Rock Paper Scissors.

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