Score
0
Best
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Four in a row wins. Three in a row loses. Leave a gap and your rival cannot block without losing on the spot.
Players take turns placing one stone on any empty cell of the hex board. Get four of your stones in a row in any of the three directions and you win immediately. Make three in a row — exactly three, with no fourth stone extending it — and you lose immediately. Four beats three, so a move that makes both is a win. If the board fills with no result the game is a draw, which ends your run. Beat a rival and the next one searches deeper while your move clock gets shorter; run out of time and the match is lost. Your score is the number of rivals you beat.
Start by learning to see the losing shape, not the winning one. Almost every beginner's game ends with them completing three of their own stones by accident, usually along the diagonal they were not looking at. Before every placement, check all three directions through the cell you are about to take, and count your own stones on each side. This feels laborious for the first few games and then becomes automatic, and until it does it is worth more than any tactic.
The game's whole engine is the gap. A line of yours that reads stone, gap, stone, stone threatens four at the gap, so your rival has to fill it — and if their own stones sit next to that gap, filling it completes their three and they lose on the spot. Building that shape is not something you do at the end; it is the thing you are doing all game. Look for places where your rival already has two stones in line with an empty cell between them and your own line, because those are the cells they will be forced onto.
Because of that, two of your stones with one space between them is usually stronger than two touching. Touching stones are one move from a three you may not want, while spaced stones keep both the four and the trap available. When you must place near your own pair, place at distance two rather than adjacent, and you will find you almost never lose to your own hand.
Defensively, do not reflexively block. Ask first whether the cell that blocks their four would give you a three; if so, look for a counter-threat instead — your own four threat elsewhere forces them to answer and buys the tempo you need. Many positions that look lost are only lost if you insist on blocking. And watch the clock: it shrinks every match, and the commonest way a long run ends is not a brilliant rival move but a hurried placement that made three.