Connect Four

Connect Four (also known as Captain's Mistress, Four Up, Plot Four, Find Four, Fourplay, Four in a Row and Four in a Line) is a two-player connection game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the next available space within the column. The objective of the game is to connect four of one's own discs of the same color next to each other vertically, horizontally, or diagonally before your opponent. Connect Four is a strongly solved game. The first player can always win by playing the right moves.

The game was first sold under the famous Connect Four trademark by Milton Bradley in February 1974.

Mathematical solution

Connect Four is a two-player game with "perfect information." This term describes games where one player at a time plays, players have all the information about moves that have taken place, and all moves that can take place, for a given game state. Connect Four also belongs to the classification of an adversarial, zero-sum game, since a player's advantage is an opponent's disadvantage.