I really like this game. It’s very simple, can be easily played with almost any materials, and there is just enough strategy to maintain one’s interest without turning off newcomers.
The game is very much like Tic-Tac-Toe, but it sadly cannot be played on pen and paper. It’s the brainchild of John Scarne, who, as far as I can tell, loved this game more than his children. I have read the book he wrote, Scarne on Teeko, which has the first fifty pages devoted to what a fantastic and amazing game it was that will, in a matter of years, completely replace Chess and Checkers as the most played and respected board games.
Needless to say, this was not the case. It enjoyed a bit of popularity in the fifties, but interest waned when people realized that, guess what, it’s only marginally more complicated than Tic-Tac-Toe.
Still, it’s a fun game, and it doesn’t take long to figure out the basic strategy (especially when I’m here to help you with it).
Equipment
The game is played on a 5 x 5 grid with four tokens per player. The original board design, which I personally don’t like, was played on the intersections of a double-crossed board, with each intersection highlighted with a circle. This is needlessly complicated for such a simple game, but if you have nostalgia for the original design you can print it out here. Otherwise grab a more standard grid board here.
Rules
The game is extremely simple: you are trying to get all four of your tokens arranged either in a straight line or bunched up into a square. The lines can be orthogonal or diagonal, and the square is just a 2 x 2 grid sort of thing.
The board begins empty. Players alternate placing their tokens anywhere on the board, until they are all placed. If you manage to form one of the winning arrangements when you place your last token, the game ends there and your opponent isn’t very good at this. Otherwise, you enter the movement phase.
During movement, players alternate moving their tokens one space in any direction, diathogonally, just like a Chess king. There’s no capturing or jumping or any of that nonsense. The game ends when one player manages to maneuver into a victory situation.
Strategy
When you first play the game, it may feel like both of you are just randomly moving around until someone makes a stupid mistake. The trick of the game is to force victory, not by blindly trying to set up a winning position, but by setting up a “trap” -- a position in which you can win in two ways, or in which you cannot be blocked. There are quite a few traps (all discussed in the aforementioned book), and I cannot of course describe all of them, but I will leave you with one:
The standard trap (which is referred to as the “Scarne Trap” in the book) is a double victory. Black to move, and white can either get four in a row or a square on his next turn, no matter what black does (since black can only stop one of these victories). It will serve you well. There are many more traps like this -- perhaps you can discover some more for yourself.
