one solution might be to use a lookup table: -- all possible winning states lookup = {{1,2,3}, {4,5,6}, {7,8,9}, {1,4,7}, {2,5,8}, {3,6,9}, {1,5,9}, {3,5,7}} -- returns nil when there is no winner yet function getWinner() -- lets check each state for i, v in ipairs(lookup) do if field[v[1]].owner ==...