Nine Men's Morris Online: Play Free Against the Computer

Play Nine Men's Morris free online against the computer, or against a friend on the same screen: place nine men, close mills to take your opponent's men and fly when you are down to three. Germans call the game Mühle.

How to play Nine Men's Morris

1. Choose the computer, on Easy or Hard, or two players on one screen. You play light and move first.
2. Place your men one at a time on any empty point, taking turns with your opponent. Each side has nine. Three of your men in a row on a line make a mill.
3. When every man is placed, slide a man along a line to a neighbouring empty point. Tap the man, then a highlighted point.
4. Each time you close a mill, tap one of your opponent's men to take it. You win when your opponent is down to two men or cannot move.

The rules on this board

The board is three squares inside each other, joined at the middle of their sides: 24 points in all. Men sit on the points and move along the lines. The game has three phases.

• A mill is three men of one colour in a row on one line, along a side of a square or across the middle between two squares. The diagonals of the board are not lines. You close a mill by placing a man or by moving one.
• Taking a man: closing a mill lets you take one opponent man off the board. It must not be in a mill, unless every man your opponent has is in a mill. The official tournament rules (World Mill Federation) have allowed that exception since 2010, and the English sources word it the same way. A move that closes two mills at once still takes one man.
• Flying (German "Springen") is on in this game. When you have three men left and none in your hand, you may move any of them to any empty point. The sources differ on whether flying is a standard rule or a variation; the German game and the common English rules use it.
• Who starts: the sources do not say, so on this board light, which you play, moves first.
• Point names run from a1, the bottom left corner of the outer square, to g7, the top right corner: files a to g from the left, ranks 1 to 7 from the bottom. The computer's moves are written this way in the status line, with × before a man it takes.

Sources, read on 15 October 2026: Nine men's morris and Mühle (Spiel) on Wikipedia.

How a game ends on this board

You win when your opponent is down to two men, counting the men still in their hand, or has no legal move. A side that is flying always has a move. The game is a draw when 25 moves each pass in the moving phase with no mill closed, counted from the moment the last man is placed. Wikipedia names no repetition or move-limit rule, only that perfect play ends in a draw; this page uses the one counter so a game always ends.

How to beat the computer

• Keep your men mobile: a man with no empty neighbour does nothing, and a side that cannot move loses. Place on the middle ring's crossing points, which touch four neighbours, before the corners, which touch two.
• Block an open pair: when two enemy men sit on a line with the third point empty, put a man on that point before they fill it.
• Take the right man: remove a man from an open pair of the computer's, not a stray one, and think about which of your own lines it unblocks.
• Open and close the same mill: once you can slide a man out of a mill and back in, you take a man every second move unless your opponent can step into the gap.
• Threaten two lines at once: when you are flying, land on a point that makes two open pairs, because your opponent can only block one.

Easy plays any legal move at random, so it is a gentle game for children and first-timers. Hard looks several moves ahead on every turn, counting men, mills, open pairs and how many moves each side has, and takes your mistakes.

Frequently asked questions