Everyone knows going first in tic tac toe is better. The theory is straightforward. The first player has more opportunities to set up a fork before the opponent has established a defensive structure. With perfect play it makes no difference since every game ends in a draw, but humans do not play perfectly, and the first mover gets to exploit mistakes before the second mover does.

What nobody had until now was the actual numbers from real games.

We tracked 26,776 completed online multiplayer games played on TicToe.org. Here is what the data shows.

The numbers

Goes first: 13,482 games

Goes second: 13,294 games

The draw rates are almost identical, 50.7% versus 50.1%, which makes sense. A draw requires both players to play well regardless of who moves first. The draws are the games where skill was roughly equal on both sides.

Everything else is dramatically asymmetric.

The loss rate is the most surprising finding

Most discussions of first mover advantage focus on the win rate difference. Going first wins 39.4% versus 9.4% for going second, roughly a four to one ratio. That is significant.

But the loss rate tells an even more striking story. Going first loses only 9.9% of the time. Going second loses 40.5% of the time. That is also roughly a four to one ratio, but in the opposite direction.

What this means in practice is that going second does not just reduce your chances of winning. It dramatically increases your chances of losing. If you go second and neither player draws, you are four times more likely to be the one who loses than the one who wins.

This asymmetry makes sense once you think about it. The first player gets to set the agenda. They choose the opening square, establish the early threats, and force the second player to respond rather than create. A second player who does not know the correct defensive response to a centre or corner opening will make a mistake, and that mistake is what produces the 40.5% loss rate. The first player's job is simply to not hand the game back.

Why draws dominate

50% draws in real human games is actually lower than you might expect from a theoretically solved game. In theory, two perfect players draw every single time. In practice, only half of all games end in a draw, because most players are not playing perfectly.

The other half of games end decisively, and those decisive outcomes split four to one in favour of whoever moved first. The game is solved in theory but heavily tilted in practice.

This is also why the first mover advantage in tic tac toe is larger than in most other solved or near-solved games. Chess has a documented first mover advantage, but it is much smaller in percentage terms because chess has a vastly larger game tree and mistakes are harder to punish immediately. In tic tac toe the game tree is tiny, mistakes are punished within a move or two, and the first player is positioned to punish them every time.

How this compares to our earlier data

When we first published data from 15,655 games, the first mover advantage figures were 34.1% wins going first and 9.2% wins going second. With 26,776 games the win rate for going first has actually increased to 39.4%, suggesting the earlier sample slightly underestimated the advantage rather than overstating it.

The larger dataset also gives us a cleaner picture of the loss rates, which were not highlighted in the earlier analysis. The 40.5% loss rate for going second is the most practically useful number in this dataset, since it tells you the real cost of losing the coin flip.

What this means if you are playing right now

If you have the choice of who goes first, take it. The data is unambiguous on this.

If you go first, your priority is not to win. It is to not hand the game back. Take the centre, play for a fork, and let your opponent make the mistake that produces the win. The 39.4% win rate comes from capitalising on errors, not from the opening move itself being magical.

If you go second, your realistic target is a draw. The 9.4% win rate means you will occasionally win when your opponent makes a mistake, but building a strategy around that is not a plan. Solid defensive play that forces a draw is the correct second player strategy, and the 50.1% draw rate shows it is achievable roughly half the time even for average players.

For the full breakdown of which opening square gives you the best win rate as the first player, see our earlier analysis: The centre square has the lowest win rate. Here is why.

Play online and find out if first mover advantage holds up against you →

About this data

All figures are drawn from completed online multiplayer games played on TicToe.org. Only games played through to a result are included. Abandoned or disconnected games are not counted. The dataset covers 26,776 completed games.

Sources