✦ you against the machine $RACK

RACK

Seven columns. One machine.
Four in a row takes the pot.

You feed a column, the machine answers. It is not a mood or a difficulty slider: it searches the board to the end of its horizon before every move, so it never misses a four and never leaves you one. Each drop costs the same and leaves what it does not burn in the pot. Make four in a row and the pot is yours; let the machine make it first and the pot rolls into the next board.

Read the law How it works

pick a column, the disc does the rest, keys 1 to 7 work too

your move round 1

You play

drops0 pot0 burned0 rounds0

You open, red goes first. Pick a column. This board runs the rule on its own numbers; the real ones are set at deploy.

How it works

Four rules, and not one of them is a dice roll.

Seven columns, one rack

You never place a disc on a square. You pick a column and gravity does the rest, which is what makes a column worth thinking about: what you feed decides what the other side can do next.

You choose your side

Take red and open the board, or take yellow and answer. Opening is worth something in this game, and so is replying: the choice is yours before the first disc, and it is fixed for the round.

The machine reads everything

The other side is not a mood or a difficulty slider. It searches the board before every answer, takes any four it can reach and blocks any four you can. Its policy is published and identical for everyone.

Four in a row opens the pot

Every drop burns a part of itself and leaves the rest in the pot, along with a toll on every swap in the pool. Four of yours in a line pays you. Four of the machine's, or a full board, and the pot rolls into the next one.

The law of the board

Six things the contracts hold to, whatever happens.

The pot opens on four in a row for the players, and on nothing else.

A disc always falls to the lowest free row of the column it was fed to.

The machine's answer follows a published policy. Same board, same answer, for everyone, forever.

What is paid at a four equals the pot, to the last unit, with nothing kept back.

A drop costs the same for everyone, at every moment of a round.

A board the machine wins, or fills, pays nobody: the pot rolls into the next one.

Every number in the game is fixed at deployment and published on the law page. The team keeps nothing.