HMMT 2001 E9

Boris was given a Connect Four game set for his birthday, but his color-blindness makes it hard to play the game. Still, he enjoys the shapes he can make by dropping checkers into the set. If the number of shapes possible modulo (horizontal) flips about the vertical axis of symmetry is expressed as $9(1+2+\cdots+n)$, find $n$. (Note: the board is a vertical grid with seven columns and eight rows. A checker is placed into the grid by dropping it from the top of a column, and it falls until it hits either the bottom of the grid or another checker already in that column. Also, $9(1+2+\cdots+n)$ is the number of shapes possible, with two shapes that are horizontal flips of each other counted as one. In other words, the shape that consists solely of 3 checkers in the rightmost row and the shape that consists solely of 3 checkers in the leftmost row are to be considered the same shape.)