How to Play Dots and Boxes: Rules and Winning Strategy
Dots and Boxes is a classic pencil-and-paper game for two players. On Royal Duels it is played on a grid of 5×5 dots, which makes 16 boxes.
The rules
- Players take turns drawing one line between two neighboring dots, across or down.
- If your line closes the fourth side of a box, the box is yours and you draw again.
- One line can close two boxes at once.
- When every line is drawn, the player with the most boxes wins.
Strategy tips
- Never draw the third side of a box if you can avoid it. That hands the box to your opponent.
- Take free boxes whenever a box already has three sides.
- Watch for chains. Late in the game, the board splits into chains of boxes. Once someone opens a chain, the other player can take the whole thing.
- Give away the smallest chain. When every move gives something away, open the shortest chain first.
- The double-cross trick: experts sometimes leave the last two boxes of a chain for their opponent, so that the opponent has to open the next, bigger chain.
A little history
Dots and Boxes was first described in 1889 by the French mathematician Édouard Lucas. Mathematicians still study it, because the chain strategy is surprisingly deep.
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