Guide
How to Play Tic-Tac-Toe
Tic-Tac-Toe is the classic 3 by 3 alignment game: two players take turns placing Xs and Os, and the first to complete a row, column, or diagonal wins. It is one of the easiest games to learn, but the small board still teaches real strategy because every square changes the threat map.
On Opka you can play solo against Opka Bot or hand the device back and forth in two player mode. Solo has three levels: Easy plays any open square, Medium takes every win and blocks every immediate threat, and Unbeatable searches the whole game and never loses. You can also choose whether you take X or O.
Against Unbeatable, strong play becomes a draw, and that is part of the game's charm: the lesson is not only how to win, but how to make losing impossible. Medium is the level where forks start to pay off, because it answers the threat in front of it without looking any further ahead.
How Tic-Tac-Toe is set up
The board has nine empty cells arranged in three rows and three columns. X moves first by default, then O, and the marks alternate until someone wins or the board fills.
Legal moves
A move places your mark into any empty cell. You cannot move an existing mark, replace the bot's mark, or play after the game has already ended.
Win and draw condition
Three matching marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line wins immediately. If all nine cells fill without a three-in-a-row line, the game is a draw.
Tic-Tac-Toe and misere
Misere Tic-Tac-Toe, sometimes called Toe-Tac-Tic or reverse Tic-Tac-Toe, keeps the same board and the same turn order but inverts the goal: making three in a row makes you lose. Every instinct from the standard game has to be re-learned, because the moves that build a line are now the ones to avoid.
That single change also flips the opening. The centre is the strongest square in standard play and one of the most dangerous in misere, since it sits on four different lines and gives you four ways to lose. Corners become safer than they look, and the game turns into a question of who runs out of harmless squares first.
Misere is a separate game rather than a mode on this page. The version here is always standard: complete a line to win.