How to Play Connect 4 Online With Friends (And Actually Win)

Connect 4 is the game most pairs settle on. Tic-Tac-Toe is over too quickly to talk through, and anything bigger needs both people to actually be in the mood. Connect 4 sits exactly in between.

A round takes a few minutes, there is nothing to learn, and there is still enough going on that losing feels like you made a mistake rather than lost a coin flip.

Starting a game

• Open the games page and pick Connect 4
• The game opens inside a room
• Send the room link to whoever you are playing
• One of you is red, the other yellow, and red goes first

It runs in the browser on both sides. Nothing to install, nothing to configure.

The board, briefly

Seven columns, six rows. You drop a disc into a column and it falls to the lowest free slot — you choose the column, gravity chooses the row. Four in a row wins: across, down, or diagonally.

That single constraint is what makes the game interesting. You cannot place a disc where you want it; you can only place it on top of what is already there, which means every move you make also builds a platform for your opponent.

What the online version adds

• A drop preview — you see exactly where the disc lands before you commit to a column
• Whose turn it is, always visible
• A score across rounds, so it becomes a match rather than a single game
• Spectators — everyone else in the room watches the board live
• Instant rematch — the rounds run together without a lobby in between

Connect 4 is solved — and that is useful to know

Connect 4 was solved in 1988. With perfect play from both sides, the player who moves first wins — but only if they open in the centre column. Open anywhere else and the game is a draw.

Nobody plays perfectly, so this does not decide your games. What it does tell you is where the value on the board is, and that is genuinely worth knowing.

Five things that win most games

1. Take the centre column

The centre column is part of more possible four-in-a-rows than any other column on the board. Every disc you put there does more work than the same disc anywhere else. If you move first, open there. If you move second, fight for it.

2. Think in threats, not discs

A threat is three of your discs with a playable fourth slot. Your opponent has to answer it immediately, which means every threat you make takes their turn away from them. Stack enough threats and they never get to build anything.

3. Build two threats at once

One threat gets blocked. Two threats in a single move — usually a row of three with open slots at both ends — cannot be. This is how nearly every real Connect 4 game is won.

4. Check the diagonals every single move

This is where most games are actually lost. Horizontal and vertical threats are easy to spot because the discs are adjacent and obvious. Diagonal ones are not, and people miss them until the fourth disc lands.

Before every move, scan both diagonal directions — yours and theirs. It is the single highest-value habit in the game.

5. Watch what you are building for them

Because discs stack, the slot directly above the one you just filled becomes playable. If dropping a disc hands your opponent a winning square on top of it, you have effectively played their move for them. Look up before you drop.

Good for a long-distance evening

Rounds are short enough that a loss does not matter and long enough that there is space to talk while you play. That balance is what makes it work over a call — you are doing something together, but not something that requires concentration you would rather spend on each other.

It also has almost no skill barrier. If one of you plays games and the other does not, Connect 4 stays a real contest in a way most multiplayer games do not.

Start a match

Open the games page, pick Connect 4, and share the link.

For something shorter, Tic-Tac-Toe takes about ninety seconds a round. For something you play with each other rather than against, try the co-op jigsaw — and there is an overview of all three games here.