Ever played Tic-Tac-Toe? How about on a 5-by-5 board, where you have to get 4 in a row? How about on an infinite board, where you have to get six in a row and you move twice? Forget putting things in a row--what if you're trying to make a square? In this class, we'll stretch and squash Tic-Tac-Toe until it becomes unrecognizable.

Bughouse chess. Monster chess. Loser's chess. Auction chess. Extinction chess. Cannibal chess. Obese king chess. In this class, I will teach you the rules to an enormous number of different chess games, and then we will spend most of our time playing the ones that sound fun.

Ever wanted to prove who can win a game? Love playing games like Hex, Chess, Nim, or Dots and Boxes? Curious what it means for a game to be impartial, zero-sum, or perfect information? Then join us as we play games, discuss strategies, and investigate the mathematics behind them.

Want to use math to beat your friends at games? This is the class for you! Throughout the class, we'll play games, and I'll talk about their winning strategies and the mathematics behind them. For the first half of the class, I'll go over general strategies in two-player games and games with more players, and I'll talk about what it means for a game to be zero-sum, or for a game to be impartial. In the second half of the class, I'll talk about winning strategies in impartial games such as Nim, the Spague-Grundy theorem, and how to use impartial-game techniques even in games that aren't impartial games. Throughout the class, we'll have ample opportunity to apply the strategies that I describe.