Q: 誰最早證明五子棋一般規則及日本連珠規則必勝？

A: 據了解，這兩種規則日本連珠專家即早已聲稱證明為黑先必勝。在學界，Allis 等人(Allis 1994; Allis, Herik and Huntjens, 1995) 是第一個證明出一般規則黑必勝。至於日本連珠棋規是Wagner and Virag(Wágner and Virág, 2001)第一個解出來的。

這點也常常會造成學界與棋界之間的誤解！這個差異，在五子棋界（甚至圍棋界、象棋界）而言，許多樹狀變化，對棋士而言即已算是證明了，無須贅述。但對學術界而言，證明必須是十分嚴謹的，若有一小部份樹狀變化分支不夠清楚，就不算證明。例如，擋法有兩百多種，如何證明其他一定是無效的。因此，在學術界，普遍的認知是五子棋界所提供的，尚無法說是證明。下述這段英文引述自Allis 1994論文中（第一個證明出一般規則黑必勝的作者），5.1節之第二段：

In Japan professional renju players (renju being a complicated variant of go-moku) have studied go-moku in detail and have stated that the player to move first (black) has an assured win (Sakata and Ikawa, 1981). These statements are sometimes accompanied by a list of main variations, such as the 32-page analysis in Sakata and Ikawa (1981). Close examination of these analyses reveals that in each position only a small number of white moves are analyzed.  For example, after black's first move at the center of a 15x15 board, white has 35 distinct moves, of which 2 are adjacent to black's first move, ignoring symmetrically equivalent moves. In Sakata and Ikawa (1981) only the variations after 2 moves adjacent to black's first move are discussed. As far as we know, prior to this work no complete proof of black's win in go-moku has been published.

最後兩句話是說：Sakata and Ikawa只有考慮到黑第一手後白的兩種棋（鄰近黑第一手棋）之後的變化。因此Allis無法認定有完整的證明。原則上，除非有人能提供其他相關資料或證據，來顯示更早即已有證明，我們將採用學術界的說法。

參考資料：

Allis, L. V. (1994). Searching for solutions in games and artificial intelligence, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Limburg, Maastricht.

L.V. Allis, H.J. van den Herik, M.P.H. Huntjens, Go-Moku solved by new search techniques, Comput. Intelligence: An Internat. J. 12 (1) (1995) 7–24.

Sakata, G. and Ikawa, W. (1981). Five-In-A-Row. Renju. The Ishi Press, Inc., Tokyo, Japan.

Wágner, J., Virág, I. (2001) Solving Renju, ICGA Journal, Vol. 24 (1) 30–34.