Fun
Tic Tac Toe
Play against a friend on the same device or challenge the computer on easy or unbeatable difficulty.
Player 1 (X) to move
Round 1
0
Player 1 (X)
0
Draws
0
Player 2 (O)
The first player alternates each round. Everything runs in your browser.
Play and explore in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
Can you beat the unbeatable computer?
No. Tic tac toe is a solved game: with perfect play from both sides, every game is a draw. The Unbeatable level searches every possible continuation before each move (the minimax algorithm), so it never loses — a draw is the best possible result, and any slip is punished with a loss.
What is the best first move?
A corner or the center. The center sits on four winning lines, a corner on three and an edge on only two. A corner opening sets the most traps: if the opponent answers anywhere except the center, the first player can force a win. If you open in the center, an opponent who replies on an edge can also be beaten; a corner reply holds the draw.
How do I never lose at tic tac toe?
Check in this order on every move: win if you can complete a line; block if the opponent threatens to complete one; create a fork — a move that makes two threats at once, since only one can be blocked; block the opponent’s fork; take the center; take a corner opposite the opponent’s corner; take any empty corner; take an edge. Following this list move by move is enough to draw the Unbeatable level every time.
How do I win against Easy mode?
Easy places its marks at random, so it misses wins and forgets to block. Open in a corner, take the opposite corner next, and you will usually get a fork — two lines threatened at once — within a few moves. Easy is good for young children learning the rules and for practising how forks are set up.
Who goes first in each round?
The first player alternates every round, so neither side keeps the first-move advantage. Against the computer, that means it opens every second round; on Unbeatable it starts in a random corner or the center. The score panel counts X wins, O wins and draws separately, and Reset scores sets them back to zero.
How many possible tic tac toe games are there?
255,168 different games can be played to the end, counting every move order. The first player wins 131,184 of them, the second player 77,904, and 46,080 end in a draw. Many are the same game rotated or reflected, and with perfect play only draws remain — which is why the game is used to teach how game-playing algorithms like minimax work.
About this tool
Tic tac toe, also called noughts and crosses or Xs and Os, is played on a 3 × 3 grid: players take turns placing X and O, and the first to line up three in a row, column or diagonal wins. If all nine squares fill with no line, the round is a draw. This version runs in the browser with large, touch-friendly squares, a two-player mode for one shared phone or computer, and a computer opponent with two very different levels.
Easy plays random legal moves, so it misses obvious wins and blocks — right for young children learning the game. Unbeatable uses minimax: before each move it plays out every possible continuation to the end, prefers faster wins and slower losses, and picks the best. The whole game has at most nine moves, so this exhaustive search takes milliseconds. Against it, the realistic goal is a perfect record of draws, and every loss shows you the exact mistake — usually a fork you did not see coming.
A fork is the key idea of the game: one move that creates two threats at once, so the opponent can only block one. A classic example as X: take the top-left corner; if O answers on the top edge, take the center, which forces O to block the bottom-right corner; then take the bottom-left corner, and X threatens both the left column and the other diagonal — O can only stop one. As O, the main defence is to answer a corner opening with the center, and then, if X holds two opposite corners, to play an edge rather than a corner.
Rounds alternate who moves first, and the score keeps X wins, O wins and draws separately, so a best-of-five with a friend is decided by play rather than by who started more often. Switching between 2 players and Vs computer starts a fresh match; changing the difficulty restarts only the current round. The game works offline once loaded and needs no account.