How to Play Four in a Row
Four in a Row — best known as Connect 4 — is a vertical strategy game where gravity does half the work. Drop discs into a seven-column grid and line up four before your opponent. Here's how it works and how to win more often.
By the Multiplayer Games team · Updated · Rules checked against the sources below
Objective
Connect four of your discs in a line — horizontally, vertically or diagonally — before your opponent.
Setup
An empty upright grid, seven columns wide and six rows tall. Each player has their own colour.
Four in a Row rules, step by step
- Drop a disc. Pick a column. Your disc falls to the lowest empty space in it.
- Alternate turns. Players take turns dropping one disc at a time.
- Connect four. Four of your discs in an unbroken line in any direction wins the game.
- Full board. If all 42 spaces fill with no line of four, it's a draw.
Four in a Row variants, and the rules we use
Four in a Row is played slightly differently from place to place. These are the variants you're most likely to meet:
- Pop Out. Instead of dropping a disc you may remove one of your own from the bottom row.
- Bigger grids. 8×7 and 9×7 boards change the opening theory completely.
- Five in a row. Wider boards needing five discs.
How Four in a Row works in Multiplayer Games:
- Standard 7×6 grid, four to win.
- First move alternates each round in a series.
- Computer opponent on Easy, Medium or Hard.
Four in a Row strategy for beginners
- Play the middle column early — more lines of four pass through it than any other.
- Build threats that sit one row above an empty space: your opponent can't block them without setting you up.
- Look for 'double threats', two winning spaces at once. Your opponent can only block one.
- Before you drop a disc, check what it lets your opponent play directly on top of it.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Playing on the edges early, where discs take part in far fewer lines.
- Filling the space beneath your opponent's winning square and handing them the game.
- Only watching horizontal and vertical lines and missing diagonals.
Four in a Row terms explained
- Threat
- Three of your discs with an empty fourth space that would complete a line.
- Odd and even threats
- Which row a threat sits on decides who will be forced to play under it late in the game.
- Zugzwang
- When every legal move makes your position worse.
A short history of Four in a Row
The vertical four-in-a-row game was published as Connect Four by Milton Bradley in 1974 and quickly became a family classic. Similar gravity games had been played on paper before that, but the upright plastic frame made it iconic.
In 1988 James Dow Allen and Victor Allis independently solved the standard 7×6 game: the first player can always force a win by starting in the centre column. Against anything less than perfect play, though, there's plenty of game left.
