Hex is simple, but standard computer chess methods would be woefully inadequate. Human players use several powerful reasoning techniques to analyse the game. A good Hex program must approximate these methods. Thats what my thesis work was about, but I never finished it. Vadim Anshelevich appears to have modeled the most important proof-building methods in his program Hexy,

Website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~hde/hex/hexfaq/