Chess with the full rule book — castling, en passant, promotion, mate detection. American checkers with mandatory captures. Othello with corner play and a perfect endgame solver. Chinese Checkers on the classic 121-hole star, 2- 3- or 6-player. Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe: nine boards in one, your move picks the next. Mancala with Kalah captures and free turns. Plus backgammon, Connect 4, Dots & Boxes, and 2048. Three difficulty tiers everywhere.
Full rules. Castling on both sides, en passant, pawn promotion with a piece picker, check, checkmate, stalemate, and 50-move and threefold-repetition draws. The AI uses negamax with alpha-beta pruning across three difficulty tiers — Easy is forgiving; Hard adds quiescence search.
Get the king to safety on move 6–10. After castling, look for a central pawn break (e3-e4 or d3-d4) — that opens lines for your bishops and rooks. The AI on Hard punishes uncastled kings ruthlessly.
Captures are mandatory in American rules — including for the AI. Setting up a position where the opponent's only legal move is a capture you've prepared a counter for is the classic trap. Push for kings; the back rank is gold.
If you're ahead in pip count, race — bring everyone home and bear off. If you're behind, build a prime (4–6 consecutive points) and try to trap a back checker. Blots are punishments waiting to happen; cover them.
The middle column passes through 7 of the 21 winning lines — more than any other column. Open with column 4 and the AI on hard mode loses about 60% as second player.
Late game is all about who gets stuck closing chains. Sacrifice a short chain to force your opponent to open a long one. "Hard-hearted handout" — give two boxes to claim five.
Pick a corner — bottom-right is conventional — and never move the largest tile out of it. Build a snake pattern down one side and the merges cascade. Most early losses come from accidentally swiping the big tile away.
Disc count in the middlegame is a trap. Corners are permanent; everything else can be flipped back. Avoid the X-square (diagonally adjacent to a corner) until you own the corner — it gives the opponent a free corner. On Hard, the AI switches to a perfect endgame solver in the last 12 squares.
One jump covers the same ground as two single steps. Chains do even better. Set up a ladder of your own marbles down the middle so the back ones can leapfrog the front ones turn after turn. In 6-player, the chaos cuts both ways — opponents become accidental hop pegs for you.