L.V. Allis, H.J. van den Herik, M.P.H. Huntjens, "Go-Moku Solved by New Search Techniques". AAAI 1993
http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/1993/FS-93-02/FS93-...
It's interesting that the rule added to limit Black's offensive capabilities gets gamified to give White some pretty sneaky offensive capabilities of their own (I'm referring to trapping forbidden points).
For anyone looking to play online, the site has links to a few places and apps
In China it is called 五子棋, I used to play a lot with my friends on paper during class XD
Can you play it with a regular Go board?
The page doesn't describe the rules that make Renju a more complicated game than plain 5-in-a-row, a.k.a. Gomoku.
First, Renju has the rule of forbidden moves to limit Black's advantage, something gomoku does not have. Second, Renju utilizes special opening rules to balance the starting positions of games [1].
Gomoku was solved in 1992 by Victor Allis as a 1st player win. A version called Free Renju was solved in 2001 as 1st player win. The standard Renju with modern opening rules such as Yamaguchi and Soosõrv-N has not been solved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renju