Tic Tac Toe

# If neither player makes a mistake, the game is drawn (but we knew that already).

# This is an exercise in examining the objective properties of a game. There are two interesting sides to this:

# 1) The objective properties of Tic Tac Toe really matter for our enjoyment of it: It is a boring game because there are so relatively few combinations.

# 2) On the other hand, humans clearly play the game in a different way than the computer. The computer’s playing style lets us make some observations about how humans play games.

# To the computer, the first move is the most complicated (takes around a second on my 2ghz machine). This is unlike human players who seldomly have any problem deciding what to do on the first move.

# The program assumes that the opponent does not make any mistakes. Humans do make mistakes, of course, so in actuality the program isn’t playing optimally. —Jesper JuulTic Tac Toe (Half-Real)

From the website for Juul’s new book. Looks good.

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