Games of Soldiers

TEEKO

Copyright (c) 1937 John Scarne

According to the author, the name Teeko was derive by taking the T from Tic-tac-toe, the E from Chess, the K from checkers, and the O from Bingo. This gave him TEKO, but the pronunciation was harsh and irritating. So he took an extra E from checkers and got TEEKO. Scarne worked for 15 years to refine the game; and in 1952 John Scarne Games Inc published Teeko. A later edition of the game was published in 1955 which had a 23 page instruction booklet for "Advanced Teeko with Point Scoring" and an 8 page booklet with an additional 13 different methods of play. Scarne also wrote a book Scarne on Teeko (hardcover Crown Publishers 1955 $2.50). [adapted from http://members.iex.net/~rfinn/gameshlf/abstract/teeko/teeko.htm]

The game starts in an empty 5x5 square board.

FIRST PHASE [DROP] - Players alternate moves by dropping 8 stones (4 for each) into empty cells..

SECOND PHASE [MOVE] - If no player achieved the winning goal, then each player moves a stone into an adjacent orthogonal or diagonal empty cell.

GOAL - A player wins when he makes a 4 in-a-row, or creates a square (this square can be of any size, i.e., 2x2 to 5x5).

An example
Black has won the game! White cannot cover the two cells [1]. Black's move c4-b3 or b2-c1 are winning moves!

The original rules stated that just the 2x2 squares were valid squares. The tournament rules (the ones that I exposed above) produce a better game, where draws are harder to achieve. For the tournament rules, it was added a scoring system, where each pattern achieved gets a specific amount of points. It goes like this: Play a series of games until one player reaches twenty points: 4x4 square: 1 point; 3x3 square: 2 points; 2x2 square: 3 points; four in-a-row: 4 points; 5x5 square: 5 points.

There is a ZRF to play Teeko with Zillions made by Matthew M. Burke, in his file there is the following information: Solving Teeko is item 90 in the 1972 MIT memo 'HAKMEM' (Beeler, Gosper and Schroeppel). The game was solved by Guy Steele in October-November 1998 and found to be a draw. As are all the variations with the standard winning configurations. There is also a Java analysis program for Teeko on Jan Kristian Haugland's website.

Check a similar game, DAO, played on a smaller board.