Teeko

Teeko is a board game, a game of strategy invented by John Scarne in 1945 and rereleased in refined form in 1952 and again in the 1960s.

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Teeko was marketed by Scarne's company, John Scarne Games Inc., and became fairly popular in its heydey, although it is virtually unknown today.

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The Teeko board consists of twenty-five spaces arranged in a five-by-five grid. There are eight markers in a Teeko game, four black and four red. One player, "Black" plays the black markers, and the other, "Red", plays the red. Black moves first, and places one marker on any space on the board. Red then places a marker on any unoccupied space; black does the same; and so on until all eight markers are on the board. The object of the game is for either player to win by having his markers situated in a straight line (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal) or square of four adjacent spaces. (Adjacency is horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, but does not wrap around the edges of the board.) If neither player has won after the "drop" (when the eight pieces are put on the board), then it's attempted via the following method: The players alternate moving pieces one at a time, with Black playing first. A piece can only be moved to an adjacent space.

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The rules, as summarized above, are very simple, but the strategy is complicated enough to fill a book, Scarne on Teeko, by Scarne (1955). Nonetheless, Guy Steele solved the game (i.e., showed what must occur if both players play wisely) in 1998: he found that neither player can force a win.

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There are sixteen variations of Teeko, such as Advanced Teeko, which have slightly different rules. All sixteen are outlined in Scarne on Teeko; the rules above are for "Standard Teeko" (or "Teeko"). Steele showed that Advanced Teeko is a win for Black (assuming, again, that both players play perfectly), as is one other variation, but the other fourteen are draws.

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Board game: A board game is any game played with a premarked surface, with counters or pieces that are moved across the board. Simple board games are often seen as ideal "family entertainment" as they can provide entertainment for all ages. Some board games, such as chess or Go, have intense strategic value an...

Game of strategy: A game of strategy is a game where the outcome is influenced through interaction with the environment and other players. If played with pseudo artificial intelligence they often come close to being a game of skill. Games of skill should not be greatly influenced by luck of any kind (eg. no dice or c...

John Scarne: Orlando Carmelo Scarnecchia was born March 4, 1903, in Steubenville, Ohio and at some point anglicized his name to John Scarne (). He moved to Fairview, New Jersey as a child. Leaving school after the eighth grade, he learned as a teenager how to perform card tricks like three-card monte and to gamb...