🔴Play Connect Four

Connect Four is Tic Tac Toe grown up. The board is seven columns by six rows, gravity decides where your disc lands, and that one constraint turns a simple alignment game into something with real depth — you are not choosing a square, you are choosing a column and inheriting whatever height it happens to be at.

The game was solved in 1988: the first player wins with perfect play by opening in the centre column. Almost nobody plays perfectly, though, and the practical game is about parity and threats. Because discs stack, the row a threat sits on determines who can afford to use it, which is the single idea that separates strong players from casual ones.

The computer opponent searches several moves ahead with alpha-beta pruning and a positional evaluation that values central control. It will find any win available within its horizon and will block yours reliably, but it is not perfect — a well-built double threat still beats it.

Red always moves first, which in Connect Four is a measurable advantage. Take the centre.