joshi tm: Well first, the site I'm talking about is GoldToken in case anyone is really interested.

They don't keep those types of stats - so I checked out, they have only a little over 200 rated players (so not a very popular game). Plus they have a special rule for that game only that is has to be EXACTLY 4 in a row. 5 in a row does not count as a win. (Which makes me curious if that rule is not in place to make things a little more even)

Anyway, I looked at the top couple of rated players, and it looks pretty even... with maybe player 1 having a slight advantage, but the wins/loses seem to be spread out pretty evenly. (Of course I only looked at a couple of players past games - so I could be wrong.)

Spider Line4. In current game, you can place a piece along any of the 4 walls - so A4 is a valid first move.

In Sphere Spider Line4, if you pretend the side walls are not there, then a move on A4 would be like it is in middle of the board. Which being able to start a piece in say A4, as I try to image a game - would give the first player a big advantage - since you can start to work to make a line in many more directions - giving player 2 possible too many ways to block before they can even make a real non-blocking move.