The Thanksgiving Dry Run: Three Games to Play Alone Before Guests Arrive

Wednesday, 10:12 p.m. The dishes are done, the table is clear, nobody arrives until noon tomorrow, and you are going to sit at a 15×15 board alone for forty-five minutes. Three short games, one index card. That is the whole dry run, and it is the only rehearsal a holiday board ever gets.

Most hosts skip it because the rules take eighteen seconds to explain. They are right about the rules. What they miss is the three things a rulebook cannot tell you: how fast this board actually plays, how long a warning stays on the screen, and how few moves it takes before somebody in the room asks whose turn it is. Forty-five minutes buys all three.

Run one, twelve minutes: twelve moves against the computer

Open the board, change nothing, put a stopwatch on the table and play twelve moves. Do not try to win.

Here is what this run cannot tell you, so that you do not misread it. The computer thinks for up to twelve seconds on every move: it deepens its search from two plies toward twelve and stops when the budget runs out. That makes it slower than every human at your table except the one losing badly. Time a full game against it and you will conclude that gomoku takes twenty minutes, which is wrong by a factor of two.

What you do learn is your own pace. Count only your moves. Six seconds is a person who has played before; fifteen is a person deciding.

While you are there, watch what the board does when it ends. The winning line is marked, a result box opens in the middle, and the game stops. No score, no record, nothing saved. Close the tab and that game is gone. Practicing against the computer earns an hour in a normal week; tonight it is only a metronome.

Run two, eighteen minutes: switch to a friend and play both colors

Tap the two-player option. The computer leaves, the difficulty buttons gray out, and both colors are yours. Play one game to the end, alternating: black, white, black. You will play badly, because you know both plans and neither one surprises you. The point is not quality. The point is the count.

Write every move down as you go. Two characters per move, column then row: H8, then I8, then H9. A 42-move game is 84 characters and takes under a minute. You are writing them because this board has no save and no export: no game file, nothing left in the browser, and a page refresh puts you back at 15×15, Freestyle, against the computer, medium. The paper is the only record that will exist.

Stop the moment one side has an open four, four in a row with both ends empty. That game is already won and the fifth stone is paperwork. Then count what you wrote.

Rough numbers to check yourself against: two people who know the rules finish 9×9 in 20 to 24 moves, 15×15 in 40 to 45, 19×19 in 60 to 70. If your 15×15 game ended at move 19, one of your two selves stopped defending, and you have just learned something about the guests arriving tomorrow.

This is also the only mode where you can build a position by hand. Against the computer an answer always arrives within twelve seconds, so you cannot place six stones of your own choosing. Two-player mode has nobody to interrupt you. Set up the exact position you want the eight-year-old to solve, leave it on the screen, and walk away.

Run three, ten minutes: break the rules on purpose

Switch to Renju, take black, and try to make a double three: two separate open threes built by one stone. The board refuses. The stone comes off, black plays again, a box appears in the middle of the screen and the status line under the board changes text.

Now the test that decides something. Make the foul, step back two paces, and look at the screen from where a guest across the table would sit. Can you still read it? It stays for two and a half seconds. At a table where six people are talking and one is carving, the honest answer is no, and that answer sets your rules: Freestyle, fouls off, for the family game.

If somebody insists on Renju because they like rules, do not recite three foul names. Give them the asymmetry, because it is the part that decides games: black must make exactly five, and white wins with five or more, six included. In tournament renju that sixth black stone loses on the spot. This board simply declines it, which is the version you want on a holiday.

Last step in this run: press the hint button once. It pulses the highest-rated empty point for three seconds, then fades, without explaining why and without showing a variation. It is an answer with no argument behind it. Press it tonight so you know what it looks like, then agree at the table that nobody presses it. The feature walkthrough puts the rest of the switches in one place.

The index card

Five minutes, one card, three lines, taped to the edge of the table where you can read it and guests cannot.

1. Black starts, and a refresh resets everything. The board comes back at 15×15, Freestyle, against the computer. Check the mode before anyone places a stone.
2. Fouls off, or the rule said out loud. Freestyle by default. If the table asks for Renju, say the asymmetry, not the three foul names.
3. No undo for anyone. If you allow one, allow exactly one per player, and know what it does. In two-player mode an undo takes back a single stone, so it deletes the opponent's answer and hands him the move again. That is not a correction, it is a free reroll, and the table notices by the third game.

What to set, by table

The seconds column is per move, not per game, because that is the number you can actually police with a phone. The time-budget piece has the per-game version if you would rather set a hard limit.

Sitting	Board	Seconds per move	Handicap
First game of the day, mixed ages	9×9	25	1 rim stone from the strongest player
Grandparent against an eight-year-old	9×9	30	2 rim stones, paid by the grandparent
Two adults, evenly matched	15×15	30	none
Four adults rotating over one board	15×15	20	none
The last game, after the pie	19×19	40	none

The rim stones need one sentence of explanation, because this board has no pass button and no way to place stones before the game starts. The stronger player throws a stone away during the game, on the outer line, one empty point apart. Two on 9×9 is a real game. Three on 9×9 is a resignation with paperwork.

Four things to leave out of the rehearsal

Do not rehearse on 19×19. Alone, one game eats the entire rehearsal, and it teaches nothing the 15×15 run did not.

Do not rehearse with the hint on. You will find the good move, conclude the board is easy, and be wrong. You were shown the answer.

Do not rehearse on the wrong device. If the guests will play on the tablet, run the twelve moves on the tablet. Fifteen lines on a phone in portrait come out about 23 pixels apart, which is not a tap target, it is a coin toss.

Do not plan to remember the games. There is nowhere for them to go. If you want to know next year whether the eight-year-old improved, the score sheet is the only instrument you own. Running the night itself is the next page after this one.

What Thursday looks like if you do it

Nobody asks whose turn it is, because the card is on the table. Nobody loses to a computer by accident, because the mode was checked. The kid gets a position built for her, not a random one. And when the eight-year-old wins a 9×9 on two rim stones and shouts about it, you will know exactly what those two stones cost.

Forty-five minutes on Wednesday, three games, one card. The board is already open: start with the twelve moves and the stopwatch.