"How to always win at Dots and Boxes" — Numberphile and Elwin R. Berlekamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KboGyIilP6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBngUo0JTzs

Hey guys,above's videos were posted recently on Numberphile's youtube channel. Numberphile is a team of mathematicans who try to teach about all kinds of mathematical phenomenons and these videos explain the basics to Dots and Boxes including chain-rule and doublecross-strategy; they feature Elwyn R. Berlekamp who is known for his books "the Dots and Boxes game: Sophisticated child's play" and "Winning Ways". Please check out the videos if you haven't been concerned with Dots and Boxes yet; Numberphile and Berlekamp are really awesome, Dots and Boxes really fascinating and I'd be very happy if this could bring us some more players to compete with :).

best regards mah dawgz :p

so! according to the first video.the 4x4 dots (9boxes) was solved all the time!

Yes 9 boxes is very easy if you know the chain rule.

Yes, 9 boxes has been solved for a long time (although for quite a while before that it was merely proved to be a player 2 win, and assumed to be a 5-4 win, instead of proven to be a 6-3 win for player 2).

16 boxes was proved to be an 8-8 tie by David Wilson in 2001 (I think he may have been the one to discover and prove the 6-3 win, too).

My bot, The_Shark_C, proved 25 boxes to be a 13-12 about a year ago.

I'm pretty sure that 36 boxes won't be solved in my lifetime....

@William, did you publish your results?

I thought you had The_Shark_C to continue searching for the moves which were effectively best moves and the best answers for player 2.

Could you make a sum-up of what you learned for us mere mortals?

Sadly, I have not been able to work much on it.  I have not been running any analysis, because my hard drive is essentially full (10.8 of 12 TB -- and is currently not backed up, because one of my raid arrays failed).

Top priorities:

1.  Creating a backup of the data.

2.  Getting the Little Golem interface working again.

3.  Writing the paper.

4.  Extending the results.