Yes — Connect Four is solved. If the first player (red) plays perfectly, they win every time. This was proven independently in 1988 by Victor Allis and James D. Allen.
What does "solved" mean?
A solved game is one where we know the outcome from every possible position, assuming both players play optimally. Connect Four is strongly solved — we don't just know that red wins, we know the best move in every position.
For context: chess and Go are far too complex to solve. Tic-Tac-Toe is trivially solved as a draw. Checkers was proven to be a draw in 2007 after 18 years of computation. Connect Four sits in the middle — complex enough to be interesting, simple enough to be fully cracked.
The standard 7×6 board has roughly 4.5 trillion possible positions. That's manageable for computers but way too many for any human to memorise.
Who solved it?
Victor Allis wrote his Masters thesis at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 1988. He built a program called VICTOR that used nine strategic rules — Claimeven, Baseinverse, Vertical, Aftereven, among others — each mathematically proven correct. Combined with search algorithms and a database of around 500,000 positions, VICTOR could play in real time, always winning as red.
James D. Allen reached the same conclusion independently around the same time. His work focused more on cataloguing expert-level play and openings. He later wrote "The Complete Book of Connect 4" for Sterling Publishing.
Both came to the same result: on the standard 7×6 board, red wins with optimal play from the center column.
Why play Connect Four?
You might think being solved ruins the game — it doesn't.
No human can play perfectly from memory. The game tree is enormous and yellow can deviate into unfamiliar positions at any point. Even strong players make mistakes regularly, and exploiting those mistakes is where the real competition lives.
If anything, being solved makes the game more interesting to study. There's a clear standard to measure yourself against — you can check any position against the solver and see exactly where you went wrong.
Playing red from the center column opening is also only one way to play. Competitive players often choose non-center openings deliberately to create more complex games. The edge columns lead to theoretical draws, making it a genuine contest for both sides.
Larger board sizes (8×7, 9×7, or wider) aren't fully solved and offer fresh territory. The principles carry over — parity, threats, Zugzwang — but the specific solutions don't, so you have to think rather than recall.
Randomised starting positions are the most common way competitive players keep things interesting. A random first stone means neither player can rely on memorised lines — you need to understand the underlying strategy to adapt.
Even on the standard board, rote memorisation only gets you so far. Understanding why moves are good is what separates strong players from those who just know the first few book moves.
Try it yourself
This website has a solver at /eval that you can use to explore positions with real-time feedback. After a game, use /analyse to see where you deviated from optimal play.
If you want to learn more about approaching perfect play, check out how to win at Connect Four every time.