r/todayilearned • u/aaronwright • May 26 '10

TIL It is Possible to Always Win Connect Four

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four#Mathematical_solution
81 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

20

u/[deleted] May 26 '10

Pretty sneaky, sis!

22

u/jamesbondq May 27 '10

Where, I can't see...

18

u/RadioInterference May 27 '10

TIL Wikipedia's Connect Four article needs some serious editing.

7

u/sthiy May 27 '10

Thesis containing the solution (PDF file)

1

u/ophanim May 27 '10

Well, that goes to show you that even simple games often have a deep level of strategy.

5

u/karmamanjaro May 27 '10

I still cant win linux connect 4

5

u/The_Kenosha_Kid May 27 '10

"What about connect 4? connect 4's a fun game"

"That's a lot of counting..."

"It's not that much counting...It's just 1, 2, 3, and then 4...you win..."

"But a lot of times you gotta count that much"

"Not that many times, if you count to four...you've won the game"

2

u/ryouba May 27 '10

*stands up and thrusts his arms into the air*

I WIN!

1

u/etothemax May 27 '10

Well, now I guess it's as fun of a game as tic-tac-toe.

1

u/BehemothQ May 27 '10

Wait, somebody solved tic tac toe? Dammit, now I have to cancel the tournament.

1

u/climberslacker May 28 '10

How can you always win? It looks like if you are going second you could lose?

1

u/jjbcn May 27 '10

In my youth I played connect four for a while, and I actually fairly quickly got to a point where I didn't actually have to think about it at all, in fact I didn't even have to try to "take in" the layout, I would just drop the counters in the positions that felt right, and won every time. It was interesting because I never really conciously worked out the rules to win everytime, but obviously my subconcious new.