Mū tōrere

How to play Mū tōrere

Mū tōrere is a Māori game from the East Cape of the North Island of New Zealand, played on an eight-pointed star scratched on the ground or drawn on bark.

The rules

• The board. Nine points. Eight of them, the kewai, sit in a ring, each joined to its two neighbours. The ninth, the pūtahi, sits in the middle and is joined to all eight.
• The counters. Each player has four counters, the perepere. They start on four kewai side by side, facing the other player's four across the ring. The pūtahi starts empty.
• A move. White begins. On your turn, move one of your counters along a line to the empty point next to it. With eight counters on nine points, there is only ever one empty point.
• Into the middle. A counter may move from a kewai into the pūtahi only if one of its neighbours on the ring holds an enemy counter. A counter in the pūtahi may always move out to the empty kewai.
• The first moves. In each player's first two moves, the counter you move must stand next to an enemy counter. So the game opens with one of the two counters at the ends of a row, and nobody is shut in at once.
• Winning. There is no capturing and no luck. The player who leaves the other with no move wins.

In this version

• When the same position comes round for the third time, the game is a draw.
• The game is small enough for the machine to know every position. At Strong it always plays the best move — with best play from both sides the game is a draw — and at Medium and Easy it now and then plays a random move instead.

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