Tigadi (तिगड़ी) is a two-player board game from India, played on three concentric squares with 24 points. It is a variant of nine men’s morris — known in Hindi as नवकंकरी or नौ गोटी — with one important difference: the corner diagonals are real lines, so they carry both moves and captures. The name comes from the tigadi, a trio of your pieces on one line, which is what lets you capture.

How do you play Tigadi?

Each player has nine pieces, called gotis. You take turns placing them on any empty point until all eighteen are down. After that, you take turns sliding one goti to the next point along a drawn line. Whenever three of your gotis occupy one full line, you take an enemy goti off the board. Reduce your opponent to two gotis and you win.

A tigadi is three of one player’s gotis filling all three points of a single drawn line — the same idea as a mill in nine men’s morris. There are 20 such lines on this board: twelve around the three squares and eight along the spokes. Closing a tigadi captures exactly one enemy goti, no matter how many lines you complete at once.

Can a piece jump when you only have three left?

No. In Tigadi a goti always steps to the next intersection along a line — at nine pieces, at three, at two. There is no flying, hopping or jumping at any piece count. This is the biggest difference from the widely published nine men’s morris rules, where a player reduced to three pieces may move anywhere.

What happens if a player has no legal move?

They pass, and the turn goes back to their opponent. Being blocked is never a loss in Tigadi. Because the board is fully connected and every point has at least three neighbours, both players can never be stuck at the same time.

Is Tigadi the same as Nau Goti?

They are the same family of game. Nau goti means “nine pieces”, which is what each player starts with, and the game is also called नवकंकरी across parts of India. Elsewhere you will find it as nine men’s morris, mills, merels or morabaraba — though the diagonals and the no-jumping rule make this version distinct.

Can a tigadi capture more than once?

Yes, and this is how games are won. Move a goti out of a completed tigadi and back in on a later turn, and it counts again, capturing another enemy goti each time. Players call this a running tigadi, and setting one up is the strongest plan in the game.

Which pieces can I capture?

Any enemy goti that is not standing inside a completed tigadi of its own. Pieces inside an enemy tigadi are protected. If every one of your opponent’s gotis is inside a tigadi, that protection lapses and you may take any of them.

Can I play Tigadi online with a friend?

Yes. Create a room and you get a four-character code and a shareable link. Your friend opens the link on any device and you play in real time, with the server refereeing every move. You can also play on one device by passing it back and forth, or against the computer at three difficulty levels.

How does a game of Tigadi end in a draw?

Two ways. If the same position occurs three times with the same player to move, the game is drawn. So is a run of 100 turns with no capture at all. Both counters only start once every goti has been placed.

An Annotated Tigadi Game, Move by Move

How to read this game

Points are named the way the board on this site names them: the ring first — outer, middle or inner — then the compass direction. So “outer north-west” is the top-left corner of the big square, and “middle west” is the left-hand midpoint of the middle square. The diagonals join the three corners that share a direction, such as outer north-west, middle north-west and inner north-west.

Bone, the pale piece, moves first; Seed, the dark piece, moves second. Each row is one turn. “Outer west → middle west” is a step along a line; “takes” names the piece removed by the tigadi that move completed.

The game was played by this site’s computer opponent against itself, then replayed through the site’s rules engine to confirm every move is legal and every capture happens as stated. The commentary is ours.

After 18 turns Bone has captured two pieces and lost none. After 44 turns Bone has two pieces left and Seed has six. Seed wins.

The placing phase, turns 1–18

Turn	Player	Move	Comment
1	Bone	Place outer north-west	A corner: three lines run through it.
2	Seed	Place inner south-east	Also a corner, far from Bone.
3	Bone	Place outer north-east	Second corner, and a threat along the outer north side.
4	Seed	Place outer north	Blocks it.
5	Bone	Place outer south-west	Threatens the outer west side.
6	Seed	Place outer west	Blocks again.
7	Bone	Place outer south-east	All four outer corners, and two threats at once: the outer east and outer south sides.
8	Seed	Place outer east	Can only block one. Outer south stays open.
9	Bone	Place inner north-east	Bone banks the open threat and adds another, on the north-east diagonal.
10	Seed	Place middle north-east	Forced: the diagonal had to be blocked.
11	Bone	Place inner north-west	Two more threats: the inner north side and the north-west diagonal.
12	Seed	Place middle north-west	Blocks the diagonal, and quietly starts a line of its own along the middle north side.
13	Bone	Place outer south, takes middle north-east	Tigadi on the outer south side. The capture kills Seed’s threat and reopens Bone’s diagonal.
14	Seed	Place middle north-east	Again: blocks the diagonal, restores the middle north threat.
15	Bone	Place inner north, takes middle north-east	Second tigadi, inner north side. Same capture, same reasons.
16	Seed	Place middle north-east	A third time. Two pieces down, but the shape survives.
17	Bone	Place inner south-west	Bone’s last piece, eyeing the south-west diagonal.
18	Seed	Place middle south-west	Blocks that diagonal and creates the position that decides the game.

The turning point: two threats Bone cannot both stop

Look at Seed’s pieces after turn 18. Middle north-west and middle north-east are Seed’s, with middle north empty — and Seed’s piece on outer north is one step away from it. Middle north-west and middle south-west are Seed’s too, with middle west empty — and Seed’s piece on outer west is one step away from that.

The outer midpoints Seed placed on turns 4 and 6 looked like mere blocks. They were also feeders: pieces directly behind a gap, ready to step in. Seed has two tigadis one move from closing, and Bone, to move, has no capture of its own.

We checked this with the engine: every legal Bone move on turn 19 allows Seed a capture on turn 20. And no placement Bone could have chosen on turn 17 avoids that either.

Bone’s only piece next to either gap is the one on inner north, so it steps into middle north to block that line. Seed closes the other line instead and removes the blocker.

The moving phase, turns 19–44

Turn	Player	Move	Comment
19	Bone	inner north → middle north	Blocks one threat, and breaks Bone’s own inner north tigadi doing it.
20	Seed	outer west → middle west, takes middle north	The middle west side is complete. The blocker goes.
21	Bone	outer south → middle south	Aims at the south spoke, but leaving the outer south side unprotects the pieces still on it.
22	Seed	outer north → middle north, takes outer south-west	Second line closed. Seed now has two complete tigadis sharing middle north-west.
23	Bone	inner south-west → inner south	Two of three on the south spoke, with outer south-east ready to step in.
24	Seed	outer east → middle east	A third line: inner south-east could step up to close the middle east side.
25	Bone	outer south-east → outer south, takes inner south-east	Bone’s spoke closes, taking the one piece that could complete Seed’s new line. A good capture.
26	Seed	middle west → inner west	Opens the middle west side, to close it again next turn.
27	Bone	inner south → inner south-east	Bone tries the same trick with its spoke.
28	Seed	inner west → middle west, takes inner south-east	Closes first and takes the piece that stepped out, ending Bone’s running tigadi before it began.
29	Bone	middle south → middle south-east	Plugs the middle east side before Seed can return to it.
30	Seed	middle north → inner north	Now the other line opens.
31	Bone	outer south → outer south-east	Builds pairs on the outer east side and the south-east diagonal, but neither can close: the only Bone pieces next to each gap are already part of that line.
32	Seed	inner north → middle north, takes outer south-east	Closed again.
33	Bone	middle south-east → middle south	Little to do.
34	Seed	middle north → outer north	Opens middle north once more.
35	Bone	inner north-west → inner north	Now next to middle north — one turn too late.
36	Seed	outer north → middle north, takes middle south	Bone is down to four.
37	Bone	inner north-east → inner east	Bone has no threat it can complete.
38	Seed	middle west → outer west	Opens the middle west side.
39	Bone	inner east → inner south-east	Nothing reaches middle west.
40	Seed	outer west → middle west, takes inner south-east	Three left.
41	Bone	inner north → inner north-east	Without flying, three pieces cannot be everywhere.
42	Seed	middle north → inner north	Opens middle north.
43	Bone	outer north-west → outer north	Arrives beside the gap, but Seed is to move.
44	Seed	inner north → middle north, takes outer north	Bone has two pieces. Seed wins.

The engine Seed built

From turn 22 to the end, Seed did one thing: open one of its two lines, then close it. Both lines run through middle north-west, which never moved and, from turn 20 on, was protected throughout because it always sat in at least one complete tigadi.

What made it unstoppable was geometry, not speed. Middle west has four neighbours — outer west, middle north-west, middle south-west and inner west — and after turn 20 Bone never had a piece on any of them. Middle north’s neighbours are outer north, middle north-west, middle north-east and inner north, and Bone only brought a piece beside it twice, on turns 35 and 43 — each time with the gap already open and Seed to move. Each time Seed opened a gap, Bone had no piece that could step into it; the engine confirms that for every one of Seed’s five openings.

Seed needed only five pieces for this; the sixth mainly blocked. It is the “two intersecting lines” idea from the strategy guide, played out in full.

What to take from it

Captures in the placing phase are not the whole story. Bone won that phase two to nil and still lost, because Seed finished it with the better shape.
Count feeders, not just pairs. In the second half Bone built pairs on several lines with no spare piece able to step into any of the gaps; Seed’s two pairs each had a piece standing directly behind the gap.
Two threats beat one block. A double threat at the start of the moving phase cost Bone a piece whatever it did.
Breaking your own tigadi unprotects every piece in it. Turn 21 left outer south-west exposed, and it was taken the next turn.
When you capture, take the piece that matters. Turn 25 removed Seed’s only route to a third line; turn 28 removed Bone’s only returning piece.

To test yourself, set up the position after turn 18 and look for a Bone move that does not lose a piece. There isn’t one — and seeing why teaches you what a double threat looks like on this board.