KrapkyBasic tactics: capture, rescue, create threats
The rules take a minute to learn. After that, a few simple tactics guide your play. Every good player starts with them. All the positions below were played in the game itself, and the game engine verified the effect of each move.
Capture
You capture an opponent’s dot by closing a loop of your own dots around it. The loop can connect dots horizontally, vertically and diagonally, so the smallest loop is four dots arranged in a diamond.
Before every move, check whether you can capture an opponent’s dot with a single move.
Blue plays 6-5 and closes the diamond: the red dot at 6-6 is captured.
Rescue
The same tactic can be used against you. When three opposing dots are already placed around one of yours, your opponent can capture it on their next move. The simplest way to save it is to place a dot in the last free spot in the loop. The opponent now has two dots to capture and needs three more moves to do so.
Spotting a threat one move ahead is the first thing every player learns.
Red plays 6-5. Now no blue move nearby captures anything.
Create threats: the fork
A threat is a move that leaves you one move away from a capture. Your opponent can defend against one threat. Creating two threats with one move is a fork: only one of them can be stopped.
Blue plays 5-6, leaving each red dot one move away from capture. Whatever Red plays next, Blue will capture at least one dot.
The board edge does not close a loop
A loop must go all the way around a dot, and there are no intersections beyond the edge of the board. A dot on the very edge therefore cannot be captured.
Blue dots are placed around the red dot at 1-6 wherever there is room. But the red dot is on the edge of the board, so it cannot be captured.