How to play Nine Men's Morris

1 player vs computer, or 2 online

Reduce your opponent to two men, or leave them with no legal move. You do it by lining three of your men up on a marked line, over and over.

The rules, step by step

1. 1

   The board is three squares one inside another, joined by four spokes. You play on the twenty-four points where lines meet or cross. There is no centre point.

2. 2

   Placing: take turns putting one of your nine men on any empty point until all eighteen are down.

3. 3

   Moving: after that, a turn is sliding one of your men along a line to an adjacent empty point. Men do not jump and do not move diagonally.

4. 4

   Any time you get three of your men onto one line — a mill — you take one of your opponent's men off the board. You may not take a man that is standing in a mill, unless every man they have left is in one.

5. 5

   Flying: a player down to exactly three men may move to any empty point on the board instead of an adjacent one.

6. 6

   You lose when you are down to two men, or when you have nowhere left to move. Fifty quiet turns each with nothing taken is a draw.

Three tips that change how you play

• Take the four points where four lines cross before anything else. A man there sits on two mills and has four places to go; a man on a corner sits on two mills and has two. Mobility is what wins the middle game, and being shut in is a way of losing.
• Build a mill you can open and close. Two mills sharing a man means you slide one man out and back every turn and take a man each time — the running mill, and it ends games on its own. Setting one up is worth more than closing a mill once.
• Do not rush the first mill during placing. Taking a man early costs you a turn, and a mill in a corner is the weakest one on the board. The strong opponent here will often decline an early mill for exactly that reason.

The running mill

Put three of your men on one line — say the top edge of the outer square, the left, middle and right points of it. That is a mill, and you take a man. Now suppose you also hold the point directly below the middle one, on the spoke. Slide the middle man of the mill down onto the next point along the spoke. The mill is broken, but you have not lost anything, and your opponent has one move to do something about it. Next turn you slide it straight back. The mill closes again and you take another man. It closes every second turn, for ever, and there is nothing your opponent can do except occupy the empty point you keep stepping onto — which costs them a man they needed somewhere else. Two mills that share a man are the same trick and worse: every single turn closes one of them. If you learn one thing about this game, learn to build that shape and to recognise it being built against you.

Three mistakes that cost beginners the game

Placing men to make a mill instead of to make room.

During the placing phase your opponent can see the mill coming and will block it with one man. What they cannot easily undo is a spread of men on the junction points, because that decides who can move at all once the sliding starts. Build the position; the mills come out of it.

Taking whichever man is easiest to reach.

Take the man that is about to complete a mill, or the one holding their best point. A capture is worth roughly a tenth of the game — spending it on a man that was doing nothing is the same as not taking one.

Treating three men as a loss.

Three men fly, and a flying player can complete a mill anywhere on the board. That is a real threat and it makes the endgame sharp rather than a formality. If you are ahead, close the last mills before your opponent gets to three, or spend the rest of the game blocking a man that can be anywhere.

Common questions about Nine Men's Morris