Four in a Row Strategy: The Centre Column, Odd Threats, and Zugzwang

Updated August 2026

Four in a row is a solved game: the first player wins with perfect play by starting in the centre column. You do not need perfect play to win most of your games, but you do need three ideas — centre control, double threats, and the odd-even rule. The third one is what separates people who win sometimes from people who win almost always.

The centre column is worth more than everything else

Count the possible four-in-a-rows that pass through each column. The centre appears in far more of them than any other, and the two columns beside it come next. Playing the centre first is not a stylistic choice; it is the difference between a theoretical win and a theoretical draw. When you have no forcing move, take the most central column available.

Threats, and why single threats are not enough

A threat is a spot where dropping a disc would give you four. A single threat is easy to block. What wins is a double threat: one move that creates two separate winning spots at once, so your opponent can only block one. Almost every won game ends this way.

The most common double-threat shape is three in a row with both ends open, sitting on a row your opponent must eventually fill under. The second most common is a diagonal crossing a horizontal, so that one placement completes two lines.

The odd-even rule

This is the idea most casual players never learn, and it decides close games. Number the rows from the bottom: row 1, row 2, and so on. Because discs stack, a threat sitting on an odd row tends to favour the first player, and a threat on an even row tends to favour the second player.

The reason is parity. If the board fills up with neither side able to make a free move, someone must eventually play beneath your threat and hand it to you. Whose turn that is depends on how many empty squares sit below the threat — and that is what odd and even are tracking. So as first player, aim to create threats on odd rows and to neutralise your opponent's threats on even rows. As second player, do the opposite.

Practically: when you see a threat you cannot execute yet, ask "when this column is filled up to that square, whose move is it?" If the answer is yours, the threat is real and you can play around it. If not, it is decoration.

Do not fill your own trap

A threat you can only reach by playing the square directly beneath it is worthless, because playing there gives your opponent the winning square first. Leave those columns alone. One of the most common self-inflicted losses is playing a "safe" move in a column that hands the opponent the square above it — check what your move exposes before you drop.

Playing for zugzwang

Late in a game, both sides often have no useful moves and must play somewhere. Whoever runs out of safe moves first loses. That means the endgame is about counting safe squares as much as about building lines. Keep at least one column where you can drop harmlessly, and take away your opponent's harmless columns when you can.

A practical move order

1. First move: centre column, always.
2. Block immediate fours; there is never a reason not to.
3. Look for a move creating two winning spots at once.
4. Check what your move gives away in the square directly above it.
5. Prefer threats on rows whose parity favours you.
6. In the endgame, count who runs out of safe moves first.

Learn the parity rule and games that used to feel like a coin flip become games you can see the end of from the middle.