Four in a Row
Drop your stones into the grid and be the first to line up four of them in a row β against a bot or a friend, on one of three board sizes.
How to Play Four in a Row
You and your opponent take turns choosing a column; the stone falls to the lowest free cell, so you never choose the exact square, only the column. The first player to line up four β horizontally, vertically or diagonally β wins, and if the board fills up with no four on it, the game is a draw. This version is played with black and white Go stones on a wooden board, and Black moves first, as in Go.
Pick the classic 7Γ6 board or one of the wider ones, 8Γ7 and 9Γ7. Click or tap a column to drop a stone, or press a number key from 1 to 9 to pick the column from the keyboard. Games run as a match to five wins, so a single lucky column does not settle it, and an unfinished game is saved in your browser β close the tab and it is waiting when you come back.
Play Against the Computer or a Friend
The bot comes in four levels. Beginner plays loosely and sometimes misses a threat, which makes it a fair first opponent for a child. Casual never misses a win in one move and always blocks yours, but looks no further. Advanced reads five moves ahead, and Master eight β six on the wider boards β so it almost never makes a mistake. Against the bot you play Black, so the first move is always yours.
To play with a friend, choose Two players and take turns on the same phone or computer. Undo and the hint button work in two-player games and against the two lower bot levels, so you can take a move back or ask for a suggestion while you are learning; Advanced and Master play it straight.
A Brief History of Four in a Row
Lining up stones is one of the oldest ideas in games: tic-tac-toe does it on paper, gomoku on a Go board. Gravity is the modern twist: dropped into an upright grid of seven columns and six rows, the idea became a family favorite in the 1970s. It was also one of the first classics solved by computer: in October 1988 James Dow Allen and, independently, Victor Allis proved that on the standard grid the first player can force a win by opening in the middle column. That proof belongs to those exact dimensions; change the board size and the arithmetic changes β which is the reason there are three sizes here. In Japan the game is yonmoku narabe, “four in a row”, a cousin of gomoku narabe, the five-in-a-row game played with Go stones.
Benefits of Playing Four in a Row
Gravity makes this a superb trainer for concrete reading. You cannot place a stone wherever you like, so every plan must account for what your move hands your opponent directly above it. Three board sizes add something rarer: a strategy that always worked on a small board quietly stops working when there is more space.
Tips and Principles for Winning at Four in a Row
Take the center column early; it takes part in more possible lines than any other. Never play a stone directly beneath a cell that completes your opponent’s four, and aim instead for positions where their only replies do exactly that to you. The pattern to build is the double threat: one stone opening two separate fours at once, so blocking one leaves the other. Check the diagonals every turn. And on the classic 7Γ6 board, count rows: the first player wants their threats on odd rows, counting from the bottom, the second player on even ones, because when the board fills up that parity decides who is forced to play beneath the other’s winning cell.
Questions About Four in a Row
Can the first player always win?
On the classic 7Γ6 board, yes β with perfect play from the middle column, as the 1988 proofs showed. No human plays perfectly, and neither does any of the bots here, so in practice the second player wins plenty of games. The proof says nothing about the 8Γ7 and 9Γ7 boards.
Is it the same as gomoku?
No. In gomoku you place a stone on any free point of a Go board and need five; here gravity decides where a stone lands, so four is enough. If you like this game, gomoku is the natural next step, and tic-tac-toe is the smallest version of the same idea.
Is it free?
Yes. It runs in your browser on a phone or a computer, with no download and no sign-up.
Four in a Row and Go: Making Two Threats at Once
The double threat is the shared idea. In four in a row you win by creating two winning squares your opponent cannot both block; Go players call such a position miai β two points of equal value, where whichever one the opponent takes, you take the other. The art in both games is arranging things so that one move does two jobs. The stones in your hand are already the right ones: try Atari Go, the capture game you can learn in a few minutes against a bot, then learn the rules of Go.
