Strategy with Altair

Connect 4 Strategy Guide

Every disc you drop does two things. It takes a space, and it makes the space above it playable. Altair shows you how to use both, from your first disc in the center column to the threats that decide a full board.

Start in the middle

The center column is part of more possible lines of four than any other column, so a disc there does the most work. The columns on either side are the next best. A disc in an outer column can only ever be part of a few lines.

Computers have confirmed it. With perfect play, the player who moves first wins by starting in the center column. Start anywhere else and a perfect opponent can hold a draw or win. The History of Connect 4 tells how that was worked out.

Take the center column early, and keep stacking there when nothing else is urgent.
Build lines across and on the diagonals through the middle. A vertical stack is easy to see and easy to block.
Before every move, look for a line of three your opponent could finish on their next turn.

Threats and double threats

A threat is an empty space that would complete your line of four. If the space is playable right now, your opponent has to block it. If it’s higher up the board, it waits until the column fills to that height.

Most games are won with a double threat: two winning spaces at once, when your opponent can only block one. Three discs in a row with both ends open make one. So do two lines that cross at the same empty space, where one disc finishes a three in each direction.

Don’t play directly under your opponent’s threat. Your disc fills the column up to their winning space, and they drop in on top of it.

Odd and even rows

Late in the game the board fills up, and somebody has to play in a column they’d rather leave alone. Count the rows from the bottom, one to six. As a rule of thumb, Red, who moves first, wants waiting threats on odd rows, and Yellow wants them on even rows.

The reason is turn order. Once the other columns are full, the players take turns up the last ones, and Red’s discs tend to land on the odd rows while Yellow’s land on the even ones. You don’t have to calculate it exactly. If you have a threat on a row that suits you, leave the columns around it alone and let your opponent run out of safe moves.

Practice on LarkSpark

You can start a game on the Connect 4 page without an account. Play one of eight bots, from Altair at level 1 to Orion at level 8. The lowest levels drop discs at random, the next ones block and take obvious wins, and from level 5 up each bot looks further ahead than the last. Orion rarely misses a double threat.

To play a person, pick an online match, or sign in and open a private room to send a friend a code. Your recent results are listed on the game’s stats page.

Keep playing