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Never Lose To Your Eight Year Old Cousin Again
Connect Four: Simple Strategies for a Simple Game
You’re at your grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. A juicy, full-bodied turkey bakes in the oven. The sounds of a football game drift in from the other room. The happy, unburdened voices of your loved ones waft around the room. It’s a good day. Your eight year old cousin asks you if you’re up for a game of Connect Four - a quick game with simple, universal rules. Why not? You half-mindedly play through the match when your much younger opponent abruptly leaps into the air in exclamation. “I won!” You look at the board again. You hadn’t even noticed your cousin’s four red pieces lining up diagonally to end the game.
You tell yourself it’s really not a game of skill anyway. Who cares if you lost? How much strategy could there really be in such a simple game? But as your cousin parades around the room, boasting about his success, you can’t help but feel some shame. Little kids are sore losers and sometimes even sorer winners. You laugh it off but inside you resolve to never let this happen again.
Fortunately for you, Connect Four isn’t that complex so it won’t take Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery. Still, the six disk high, seven disk wide battlefield that Connect Four is played within allows for 4,531,985,219,092 possible outcomes (gamesver). Using the exact same moves every game isn’t going to be viable if you want to win. There are however a set of simple strategies that you can learn to at least ensure you never lose to your eight-year old cousin again.
The Captain’s Mistress: Origins of Connect Four
According to legend, 1770s explorer Captain James Cook used to spend hours and hours in his cabin playing “a game that was similar much to Connect Four” (Gamesver). This is the first substantiated account of the game of Connect Four existing. In a way, navigating the sea and navigating a game of Connect Four are similar – you’re limited in the ways in which you can move. Connect Four is unique to most board games because the grid is upright, meaning you are restricted by the forces of gravity. Instead of having 42 spaces to choose from, you have at most 7 choices. When sailing, the boat will slide through the water against course as a result of a perpendicular wind. So in both, you have to be forward thinking; you have to carefully consider where each move will bring you.
Captain James Cook was so dedicated to the game that it was nicknamed by his crew as “the Captain’s Mistress”. But it wasn’t until 1974 that Milton Bradley trademarked and released Connect Four as we know it today. After its popularization, strategies began to erupt for how to best your opponents.
Learning the Ropes: Basic Fundamentals
Pay Attention - British novelist Hammond Innes once said that “he who lets the sea lull him into a sense of security is in very grave danger,” something that Captain Cook probably knew well (Seasky). The first basic fundamental strategy for Connect Four seems obvious but it’s the reason for victory in most games between beginners – someone isn’t paying attention. Maybe you judge that your opponent doesn’t know how to play or maybe you think you’re in a position so strong you can’t lose. However, you can’t mistake this advantage as an opportunity to stop paying attention. Make sure you watch where your opponent plays their disks. If you’re too focused on your own moves, you may miss a simple play. After your opponent plays, evaluate what that does for them. Make sure you don’t need to block anywhere, consider what they might be trying to gain, and then make your move in accordance.
Control the Middle - It’s generally better to place your disks centrally than it is to place on the outside of the grid. Consider the following opening (figure 1.1). It might seem like the second column is a good move if you think that your opponent is setting up to win in the first column, but it’s unlikely that anyone is going to win that early in the game. You have to consider the value proposition of your move in the future. Playing through the middle opens more possibilities for you to play in the upper rows. The middle option offers its use in five different directions as the game progresses, whereas the left option offers itself in only two directions (figure 1.2). If you control the middle, you control the game. Consider the idea of having the entire center column to yourself. Since it’s a seven disk wide grid, this would prevent your opponent from connecting four horizontally and diagonally in any direction. Of course, you can’t get the entire center column, but the idea is that the more disks you have in the center, the less options your opponent has and the more options you have.
figure 1.1
figure 1.2
Stacking - When in doubt, a good option is to put your tile directly on top of your opponent’s last tile, especially if they’re playing through the middle of the grid. This closes off the ability for them to open into multiple directions off the piece they just played. It’s good to prevent your opponent from getting too many adjacent disks. In figure 2.1 and 2.2, the effects on possibilities for yellow are shown when red stacks on their last play (figure 2.1) and when red doesn’t stack on their last play, allowing them to also have the space above their last play (figure 2.2). You can see that the difference can be extremely significant. Yellow goes from being able to play in two directions to all four directions and through multiple rows.
figure 2.1
figure 2.2
Force Opponent to Block - When you have the opportunity to control what your opponent plays, do it. This delays them from moving toward what they’re trying to set up and allows you to gain more favorable positions in the meantime. This is especially effective when it forces the opponent to play on the outside of the grid because it’s almost a wasted turn for them, offering no advantage towards winning. In figure 3.1, red is actually able to force yellow to make several consecutive blocks, most of them on the outer grid. This allows them to gain control of the center and build up adjacent disks to offer more opportunities to connect four. Figure 3.2 shows what this looks like. Red is able to force yellow into four blocks and has control of most of the middle afterward.
figure 3.1
figure 3.2
Hunt or Be Hunted : Playing to Endgame for Beginners
The average person doesn’t know strategies for Connect Four and so setting a trap to beat them is usually not difficult. A trap is when you have two empty spaces, one above the other, that can both allow you to win. By forcing a block in the lower space, you can win in the upper space. If both players know basic fundamentals for Connect Four, it gets more complicated. But for beating your eight year old cousin, traps will work fine. Figure 4.1 builds off of Figure 3.2 to show what a basic trap looks like. Red can win in either of the spaces designated by the checkmark. This allows red in their next turn to cause the series of moves in Figure 4.2. Yellow has to block horizontally, allowing red to win diagonally on the space above.
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
China Mieville said “a trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you know about it, it’s a challenge” (WiseSayings). Here are versions of common traps to make sure you don’t fall victim to them. The checkmarked spot indicates where the next piece needs to be played to avoid the trap. In figure 5.1, a common opening trap is shown, where red is trying to combine a diagonal and horizontal to create a trap. In figure 5.2, a potential slope trap is shown, where red could have three in a row with both ends available for play, making it impossible for yellow to prevent loss. In figure 5.3, a double horizontal trap is shown.
figure 5.1
figure 5.2
figure 5.3
First is the Worst, Second is the Best : A Solved Game
You probably remember kids on the playground saying this, “First is the worst, second is the best…”, but that’s just a thing that losers say to make themselves feel better. Luckily, with all of the Connect Four fundamental strategies we’ve just covered, we won’t be losing too much anymore. Still, there’s one more consideration to keep in mind when you’re playing that will help you begin your ascent into more advanced strategies: playing from first (red) vs playing from second (yellow).
Connect Four is a solved game, meaning that there is a correct solution which always wins. In 1988, Victor Allis published his master’s thesis that with the use of computer programs generated proof that Connect Four is a perfectly solved game (Cornell University). Again, the playground saying is wrong. Playing from first will allow you to always win if played perfectly. With 4,531,985,219,092 possible outcomes though, how could you play perfectly, especially with the frequent unpredictability of your opponents?
Well, you probably can’t but it is an important distinction that the first player has an advantage and the second player is destined to play defensively if the first player knows what they’re doing. With this in mind, the balance of offense and defense changes between playing from first and second.
In a game between two advanced players, it will almost always be played all the way through – meaning the game will be won in the last column to be filled or it will be tied. In games that get played all the way through, the first and second player need to try and set up to win in different rows. When playing from first, you want odd-numbered rows to endgame (3,5) and playing from second, you want even-numbered rows to endgame (2,4). So, the main thing to be aware of when you are easing into more advanced play is to make sure your opponent doesn’t set up in rows that correspond to their objectives; it actually doesn’t really matter if they set up in the wrong row because they won’t be able to fill it at endgame.
Luckily, that’s not something that your eight-year old cousin will be thinking about; the basic fundamentals will be enough to defeat him. Hopefully though, with the simple strategies outlined here, you’ll be able to beat a lot more than eight year olds. Connect Four has been a part of our popular culture for decades for a reason – it’s a lot of fun – and it’s even more fun when you win.
Works Cited
Allis, Victor. “A Knowledge-Based Approach of Connect-Four The Game Is Solved: White Wins.” Vrije Universiteit, The Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Vrije, 1988, pp. 1–21.
“A Brief History (Timeline) of Connect 4 (Four-in-a-Row).” Gamesver, Gamesver, https://www.gamesver.com/a-brief-history-of-connect-4-four-in-a-row/.
“Connect 4: 17 Fun and Intriguing Facts (You Need to Know…).” Gamesver, Gamesver, https://www.gamesver.com/17-fun-and-intriguing-facts-about-connect-4/.
“James Cook Biography.” The Biography.com Website, A&E Television Networks, 2 Apr. 2014, https://www.biography.com/explorer/james-cook.
“Ships and Sailing Quotes.” The Sea, Sea and Sky, https://rb.gy/mch7ot.
“Solving Connect Four with Game Theory.” Cornell University, Cornell University, 21 Sept. 2015, https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/09/21/solving-connect-four-with-game-theory/.
“Trap Sayings and Quotes.” Wise Sayings, Wise Sayings, https://www.wisesayings.com/trap-quotes/.
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