[wbhart]

The strategy is to get the largest tile in a lower corner, with the next biggest tile next to it, and then the next, across the bottom. Once you have the bottom row filled, concentrate on putting tiles into the next row which will match the ones on the bottom row. Initially, when the tiles on the bottom row aren't that big, you should concentrate on matching the biggest tile. But as that becomes too large, concentrate on matching the next biggest, then the next, and so on. Of course as soon as you do match a tile on the bottom, merge with it so the bottom row always contains the biggest possible value. This strategy ought to get you to 2048 within 3 tries if you don't make too many mistakes.