Infinite tic tac toe: the rules for the version with disappearing pieces
Updated October 3, 2026 by Kamal Nasir
Infinite tic tac toe is played on the normal 3x3 grid, but each player can have only three pieces on the board. When you place a fourth, your oldest piece disappears, so the board never fills up and the classic draw stops being the default. Below are the rules, the one gap they leave open, and how strategy changes.
The rules
- Two players take turns placing X and O on a 3x3 grid, as in classic tic tac toe.
- Each player can have at most three pieces on the board.
- Once you have three, placing a new piece removes your oldest one. GiiKER's Tic-Tac-Toe Bolt, a physical version of the game, puts it this way: each player only gets three marks at a time, and when you place a new one your oldest mark disappears.
- The first player to have three in a row wins. Since you never hold more than three pieces, a winning line is always made of exactly the pieces you have after your move.
- Some versions time the removal differently, so check the rules of the one you are playing. The strategy below assumes the oldest piece leaves as the new one is placed.
Can it still end without a winner?
The classic draw, a full board with no line, cannot happen, because the board never fills. But the disappearing rule on its own does not stop two careful players from cycling through the same few positions, so in principle a game can go on with no winner.
Jolt: Tic Tac Toe closes that gap with a second rule: no move may put the board back exactly as it already was. A 3x3 board has a limited number of positions, so a game that can never revisit one cannot go on forever. Jolt's maker reports simulating 40,000 games under these two rules, and every one ended in a win, most of them in about a dozen moves.
An old idea in a new shape
Limiting each player to three pieces is not new. Wikipedia's history of tic tac toe variants describes the Roman game Terni Lapilli, in which each player had only three pieces and moved them to empty spaces to keep playing. Three men's morris works similarly: pieces start to move once they have all been placed. Infinite tic tac toe keeps the three-piece limit but replaces moving with the oldest piece vanishing, so every turn is still a placement.
Strategy for infinite tic tac toe
Classic strategy is about forks. In this version the arithmetic of disappearing pieces changes what a threat is.
- Track ages, not just positions. Always know which of your pieces is oldest, and which of your opponent's.
- Once you have three pieces down, a two in a row that includes your oldest piece is not a threat: completing it would remove the oldest piece and break the line. Only a line through your two newest pieces can win next turn.
- That means one move sets up at most one real threat, so the classic fork is not available. Read your opponent the same way: only the line through their two newest pieces needs blocking.
- Every block ages your own pieces. The piece you place to block pushes out your oldest, which can dissolve a threat you were building.
- Your opponent's oldest piece leaves on their next move. Plan around the square it will open up.
- In Jolt, the no-repeat rule can also take a square away, and the square you want is often one it will not let you have. The piece you are about to lose is faded and marked with a red dot, so the cost of each move is visible.
Playing it
You can play with pen and paper by numbering each mark as you place it and crossing out the oldest. Jolt handles the bookkeeping on iPhone and iPad: play the computer at Easy, Normal or Hard (Hard runs a full minimax search), pass one device between two players, or play a friend online through a six-character room code.
Questions people ask
How many pieces do you get in infinite tic tac toe?
Three. When you place a fourth, your oldest piece is removed, so you never have more than three on the board.
Can infinite tic tac toe end in a draw?
Not the classic way, because the board never fills. Without another rule, though, players can repeat the same positions indefinitely. Jolt adds a rule that no move may recreate an earlier position, which forces every game to end with a winner.
What is the difference between infinite tic tac toe and three men's morris?
In three men's morris you place your three pieces and then move them around the board. In infinite tic tac toe you keep placing new pieces, and your oldest one disappears each time.