← All worlds · ♟️ Chess Academy · 🏟️ Board Room (friends & bots)
Classic Board Room 🎲
ARENA Six classics · Real rules · Rated coach bots
🔴 Checkers — Coach (900)
Coach's top tips: keep your back row home early (it guards your king row), trade pieces when you're ahead, and watch for the double-jump setup: a capture that lands you in front of another enemy.
⚫ Reversi — Coach (950)
Coach's top tips: corners are forever (they anchor flips), the squares NEXT to corners are traps early, and having FEWER discs mid-game often means more moves. Mobility beats greed until the endgame.
🏺 Mancala (Kalah) — Coach (900)
Coach's top tips: count so your last stone lands in your store (free turn!), set up captures by keeping one pit at exactly the right count, and empty your side first when you're ahead on stores.
⭕ Tic-Tac-Toe — the Unbeatable Coach (1600)
🔴 Connect 4 — Coach (1000)
Coach's top tips: the center column is the strongest start, and the winning idea is the double threat — build two lines of three so only one can be blocked.
🎲 Backgammon (simplified) — Coach (850)
Simplified, labeled honestly: real movement/hitting/bar/bearing-off; the doubling cube is left out. Coach's tips: don't leave blots in reach when it matters, build a 'prime' (a wall of points) to trap, and race when you're ahead in the pip count.
⚫ Go — the 9×9 teaching board
Learn: stones live on intersections. A group needs liberties (empty neighbors) to survive — take the last liberty and you capture the group! Atari = "one liberty left — danger!" The ko rule: you can't re-capture the same stone right back — play somewhere else first. Scoring (simplified, stated plainly): your stones + the empty points only you surround + your captures. White gets +5.5 (komi) for playing second. Two passes end the game — or tap Count score any time.
🁢 Dominoes — the draw game
Learn: play a tile whose number matches an open end of the chain. Can't play? Draw from the boneyard until you can (that's why it's called the draw game). Nothing left to draw? Knock to pass. Round ends when someone plays their last tile (DOMINO!) or both players knock — the player holding fewer pips (dots) scores the other's pips. First to 100 wins the match. No spinner in our version — simpler for first games, and we say so.
⬜ Dots & Boxes
Learn: take turns drawing one line. Complete the 4th side of a box and it's yours — AND you go again! The secret strategy: near the end, boxes come in chains. Smart players sometimes GIVE AWAY one small box so they can take the whole big chain after. Don't build the 3rd side of a box unless you must!