Teeko
Teeko
- Teeko** is an abstract strategy game invented by John Scarne in 1937 and rereleased in refined form in 1952 and again in the 1960s. Teeko was marketed by Scarne's company, John Scarne Games Inc.; its quirky name, he said, borrowed letters from the games [[tic-tac-toe]], [[chess]], Checkers, and Bingo.
Standard Teeko Standard Teeko is also known as Teeko 44 Positions and is a game for two players.
Gameplay One player conceals two pawns in their closed hands, one of each color. The other player selects one hand and plays the color that is revealed. Nonetheless, Guy L. Steele Jr. solved the game (i.e., showed what must occur if both players play perfectly) via computer in 1998 and found neither player can force a win.
Variations and history According to Scarne, the idea for Teeko started when he devised a winning strategy for [[nim]]; since it had sixteen distinct starting moves, it was relatively easy to memorize how to counter each one; to solve this issue, he later developed the game Scarne in the early 1930s to have 252 distinct starting positions, which later was withdrawn and rereleased as Scar-Nee (1950) and Scarney (1961). Scarne had 5000 copies of Scarne printed in 1934 but only sold 300 after a month of live demonstrations at Macy's; to prevent his mother from learning it was not successful, he destroyed the remainder by fire. Scarne ended up winning all ten matches, but did not receive publicity for this feat afterward. After the final version of the game was released, the inventory was destroyed during a fire at the company that was hired to store and distribute the products of John Scarne Games, and Teeko fell into relative obscurity.
There are sixteen variations of Teeko which have slightly different rules, with the primary variants being Alternate Teeko and Advanced Teeko. All sixteen are outlined in Scarne on Teeko; the rules above are for "Standard Teeko" (or "Teeko"). In Alternate Teeko, the opponent may dictate where a piece is placed during the opening "drop" phase; i.e., when it is Black's turn to place a new piece, Red can either point to where the piece should go, or pass the privilege back to Black. This alternate rule may be applied to one, two, three, or all four pieces placed by an opponent during the drop phase, for the first or last of the dropped pieces, which gives seven distinct variations. For example, in the "One-Move Alternate" variant, the 1st drop is played by Alternate rules followed by the 2nd through 4th drops played with Standard rules, denoted as 1A/3S; the other variants are "Two-Move Alternate" (2A/2S), "Three-Move Alternate" (3A/1S), "Alternate" (4A), "One-Move Standard" (1S/3A), "Two-Move Standard" (2S/2A), and "Three-Move Standard" (3S/1A).
Advanced Teeko adds more winning conditions, including "extended" 9-, 16-, or 25-cell squares for 58 winning positions in total (Teeko 58 Positions) or small or large right-angle diamond / rhombus shapes. In Advanced Teeko, players may choose an additional variation in which they are awarded bonus points for creating the extended shapes, as there are fewer ways to make them.
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.