Pentoga is our tribute to the best new two-player board game in years, originated in Sweden.

The original board game PentagoTM is a masterpiece of both gameplay and design, suitable for players of all ages and elegantly simple yet complex at the same time, and has won a raft of awards for the challenge it presents, most notably from Mensa.

We offer an AI opponent with graded intelligence, from level Easy to the remarkable strength of the 'Grand Master'.

The gameplay is deceptively simple.

You place counters in turn to try to get 5 in a line - horizontal, diagonal or vertical. However each time you place a counter there is literally a twist - you have to rotate one of the four quarters of the board either clockwise or anti-clockwise.

As far as we have searched, we haven't found another opponent who can beat our Grand Master level, including all our attempts to create even more optimised and deeper thinking levels of AI. There seems to be something mystical about it's method, which we designed and know the boudaries of, yet don't yet understand why it works so well.

So we set the challenge - if you can beat the Grand Master, let us know and we'll both idolize you on our site, and continue to seek the key to mastering this game!

Here are some parting tips - on any move you have to consider all outcomes of 8 possible simulataneous board states, and your opponent's next move leads to 64 possible boards, or up to 80640 possible states (though not strictly true). There are perhaps 5790597120 ways for each player to place their first two moves. You have to consider up to 256 simultaneous boards to know the full scope of your opponents position against yours.

Good luck!