This game is solved. Going first, you can force a win every single time — provided you never make one mistake across the whole game. Which is where it gets interesting.
In 1988 the game was solved independently by James Allen and Victor Allis: the first player wins with perfect play, by opening in the centre column. Every other opening either draws or loses.
Knowing that changes nothing about your Saturday afternoon, because perfect play means not making a single error in forty moves, and you will make one. But it does tell you where to start.
Look at the board and count the winning lines running through each column. The centre column sits on more of them than any other — it's part of horizontal fours, vertical fours, and both diagonals, in a way the edges simply aren't.
So: your first piece goes in the middle. And your second, usually. Control of the centre column isn't one advantage among several. It's the advantage.
Your opponent can block one threat. They cannot block two.
So the entire game is really about building a position where a single move creates two separate ways to make four — one to the left and one to the right, say, or a horizontal and a diagonal at once. Play that move and it doesn't matter what they do; you win next turn.
Every good Four in a Row player is quietly building towards this from move three, and every bad one is playing move-by-move, blocking whatever's in front of them, and walking straight into it.
Here's what makes this game unusual: you don't choose a square, you choose a column, and the piece falls. Which means every piece you place also creates the square directly above it — and hands it to whoever moves next.
So before you play, look up. If placing your piece gives your opponent a winning square immediately above it, don't play it — you've just built them a step. This is the single most common way that beginners lose: they block a threat, and the block itself creates the win.
This is the deep bit, and it's the one that separates strong players.
The board has six rows. Because pieces stack, the first player naturally ends up occupying the odd-numbered rows (1st, 3rd, 5th from the bottom) and the second player the even ones — if the columns fill evenly. So threats on odd rows favour the first player, and threats on even rows favour the second.
Strong players count this from the opening and aim their threats at the rows they'll actually be able to reach. The rest of us take the middle and hope. Both are legitimate.
On easy, the opponent here looks two moves ahead and you'll beat it. On very hard it searches eight moves deep with alpha-beta pruning, evaluating every open line on the board — it will see your double threat four moves before you set it, and it will quietly put a piece where it can't happen.
Go first. Take the centre. See how far you get.
Yes — solved in 1988. The first player can force a win by opening in the centre column and playing perfectly thereafter. Every other first move draws or loses against perfect defence. In practice, perfect play across a whole game is beyond nearly everyone, so the game remains very much alive.
The centre column, and it isn't close. The middle sits on more winning lines than any other column — horizontals, verticals and both diagonals — and control of it is the whole basis of the first player's theoretical win.
A single move that creates two separate ways to make four. Your opponent can block one of them; they cannot block both. Building one is how good players win, and walking into one is how the rest of us lose.