victor@klipper.UUCP (L. Victor Allis) (08/15/86)
I'm looking for any information I can get on a game which is a more complex kind of tic-tac-toe. In the Netherlands this game is called 'vier op een rij', in Germany 'vier gewinnt'. Description of the game: 'Vier op een rij' is played on a vertical 6 x 7 grid. Two players, white and black, the former having 21 white, the latter having 21 black stones, play the game by alternately throwing one of their stones in one of the 7 vertical columns. The stone will fall down as far as possible. The goal of the game is to have four of your stones on four consecutive horizontal, vertical or diagonal positions (like tic-tac-toe). The one who achieves this first, wins. A draw is possible, if none achieved this and the grid is full. White always has the first 'move'. It is not allowed to pass. Possible situation in a game: --------------- | | | | | | | | White (x) will lose this game since in this --------------- situation he has to play the second column to | | | |o| | | | prevent black (o) from winning horizontaly, --------------- but this will give black the possibility to | | | |x| | | | win diagonaly by playing the second column again. --------------- | | |o|o|o| | | --------------- | |x|x|o|x| | | --------------- |o|x|x|x|o| | | --------------- I would like to know if there is someone who wrote a program for this game and any results which were obtained by this program, like: 1) Result of the game after perfect play of both sides. 2) Best opening moves for both sides. Thanks ! Victor Allis. victor@klipper.UUCP Free University of Amsterdam. The Netherlands.
levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) (08/19/86)
In article <585@klipper.UUCP>, victor@klipper.UUCP (L. Victor Allis) writes: >I'm looking for any information I can get on a game which is a >more complex kind of tic-tac-toe. In the Netherlands this game >is called 'vier op een rij', in Germany 'vier gewinnt'. On this vanilla System V R2 3B20 the game is available as /usr/games/connect4 (sorry, no source code came with it on this UNIX-source-licensed system and even if it did it might be proprietary [ :-) ] but I hope this pointer is better than nothing). Please excuse me for posting rather than mailing. My route to overseas sites seems tenuous at best. -- ------------------------------- Disclaimer: The views contained herein are | dan levy | yvel nad | my own and are not at all those of my em- | an engihacker @ | ployer or the administrator of any computer | at&t computer systems division | upon which I may hack. | skokie, illinois | -------------------------------- Path: ..!{akgua,homxb,ihnp4,ltuxa,mvuxa, go for it! allegra,ulysses,vax135}!ttrdc!levy