There's a minor issue with Tic Tac Toe and statistics. We don't rank games that have fewer than four turns when they end. This is so if two players discover that they really don't like playing together in the first couple of moves, they can just resign and the game doesn't count against them. This is discussed in the "How are statistics counted?" question in the Help (http://www.pocket-monkey.com/help.jsp).
The issue is that the nature of Tic Tac Toe is such that you can have very short games indeed, fewer even than four turns; if that happens (e.g., someone wins within the first couple of turns), the game will not be counted in the rankings of the two players on the stats page.
This has bothered a couple of people over the months. Jock and I were thinking about it the other day, and decided that we should just pull Tic Tac Toe from the stats page altogether. Enough games won't be counted that it skews the results. Tic Tac Toe will still be on the site, it's just that there won't be any rankings shown for it.
We'll probably do that in the next couple of days and thought we should let you know. If anyone feels very strongly about keeping the game on the stats the way it is, please let us know, but barring a massive uprising in favor of the status quo, we'll pull it. (Side note: We are not considering keeping it in the stats and exempting it from the usual "must have three turns to be counted" rule. We have other, higher-priority things occupying our time at the moment.)
Quick follow-up: For the same reason, in the Ended Games list on your current games page, for these short Tic Tac Toe games rather than listing the winner of the game it will show "n/a" (even though if you go into the game itself, it will say who the winner actually was). When we take Tic Tac Toe off the stats page, we'll correct that as well. -- T.J. Crowder Pocket-Monkey.com
Although this posting was done in 2003 I still wanted to make a comment... I must say that tic-tac-toe is one of the games I do enjoy on this game site. I believe it makes this site unique as no other site I know of has this game. I don't necessarily agree with the rating system as if you win in 4 turns that's only fair I think as the other person didn't choose to block for whatever reason, and also if two players discover they don't like playing together in that short time something is seriously wrong then with the both of them. Though I believe now in 2006 there are results being shown now so I'm not sure if the original post is even correct anymore it's been 3 years.
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