apple tree logo
apple tree logo

More Games & Puzzles
(a subtopic of Games & Puzzles)



 

  

Matching (Chess) Wits. By Robert L. Smith. The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine (January 5, 2003). "When IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997, a pall fell over the chess world. It was clear that computers had come to dominate the game of chess. Omar Syed, a Lakewood computer engineer, took the news harder than most. Not only is he a chess fan, he's a student of artificial intelligence, holding advanced degrees in neural networks and genetic algorithms from Case Western Reserve University. Syed was willing to concede that computers make better chess players, but he does not believe that machines are smarter than humans. Not yet. To prove his point, Syed built what he believes is the first game intentionally designed to be difficult for computers. ... [H]e is offering a reward of $10,000 to the first person who can design a program that enables a computer to beat a human in Arimaa match play. The offer stands until 2020...."

Comparing Baduk and Chess. By Nam Chi-hyung. The Korea Times July 7, 2005). "For more than 2,500 years, Baduk has meant so much more than just a game to many people; it is regarded as an art, science and even a pedagogy in Korea, China and Japan, and has spread to the western world. Now, it offers not only entertainment and the thrill of competition, but it also provides a useful tool for studying human mental faculties and artificial intelligence. Baduk is often compared with Chess, which is also a popular ancient game. ... [I]n Baduk, the ultimate goal of securing the world as one’s own is achieved through competition, rather than by the destruction of the opponent."

PC network solves game. By Chrissie Davies. Financial Times (September 5, 2002). "Computer scientists in the Netherlands have solved an ancient strategy game, called awari, using a network of 144 personal computers and a problem-solving procedure, or algorithm. The game, played in many countries but especially in Africa and the West Indies, involves capturing opponents' stones or 'seeds'. ... This is a landmark achievement in artificial intelligence and follows Deep Blue's success in beating chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997."

  • Visit the awari site featured in this article: The Awari Oracle at the Division of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Do not pass Go. Computers can beat the world's best chess players but have yet to master other classic games like Go. By David Levy. The Guardian (October 24, 2002). "Ever since Garry Kasparov's sensational 1997 loss to the IBM chess monster Deep Blue, the chess world has thirsted for revenge. But the first opportunity ended in failure in Bahrain on Saturday, when Kasparov's former pupil and successor as World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik, could only draw an 8-game match against one of the world's leading chess engines, Fritz. But this was just the latest in a long series of human versus computer encounters that illustrate the inexorable march of artificial intelligence (AI). It's a story that began at a Dartmouth University conference in 1956, when several of the founding fathers of AI defined the goals of that infant science. One of them was to create a computer program that could defeat the world chess champion. Success would, those scientists believed, reach to the very core of human intellectual endeavour. By the early 1990s, due in no small part to the successes achieved in computer chess, the interest of the AI community had spread to many other games of skill, including backgammon, bridge, Go and Scrabble. Where exactly are we now in this fascinating struggle?"

"North Korea demonstrated its artificial intelligence technology when it won Japan's FOST, a tournament for computers playing Chinese chess, for two straight years in 1998 and 1999." - from North Korea suspected of training computer hackers. Associated Press / available from Hindustan Times (June 6, 2003) / also available from The Sydney Morning Herald (June 10, 2003).

  • "Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess, is an extremely popular game in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently played by millions (or tens of millions) in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other Asian countries." - from The Chess Variant Pages.

Learning to Play Black Jack with Artificial Neural Networks. By Andrés Perez-Urbie, Logic Systems Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-Lausanne. "Blackjack or twenty-one is a card game where the player attempts to beat the dealer, by obtaining a sum of card values that is equal to or less than 21 so that his total is higher than the dealer's. The probabilistic nature of the game makes it an interesting testbed problem for learning algorithms, though the problem of learning a good playing strategy is not obvious. ... We have explored the use of blackjack as a test bed for learning strategies in neural networks, and specifically with reinforcement learning techniques."

  • A Java Black Jack and Reinforcement Learning implementation by Frederic Meyer from the Logic Systems Laboratory is also available. "This Java applet implements a simplified version of the game of Black Jack. ... The learning algorithm it may use is called the SARSA algorithm, a reinforcement learning algorithm introduced by G.Rummery and M.Niranjan."

Temporal Difference Learning and TD-Gammon. By Gerald Tesauro. Originally published in Communications of the ACM, March 1995 / Vol. 38, No. 3. "This article presents a game-learning program called TD-Gammon. TD-Gammon is a neural network that trains itself to be an evaluation function for the game of backgammon by playing against itself and learning from the outcome."

  • Also see: Programming backgammon using self-teaching neural nets. By Gerald Tesauro. In Artificial Intelligence, January 2002 (Volume: 134, Issue: 1-2). Abstract excerpt: "This paper views machine learning as a tool in a programmer's toolkit, and considers how it can be combined with other programming techniques to achieve and surpass world-class backgammon play. Particular emphasis is placed on programming shallow-depth search algorithms, and on TD-Gammon's doubling algorithm, which is described in print here for the first time."

The Neural Net Backgammon Programs. From Jay Scott's Machine Learning in Games web site.

Hex. From Vadim V. Anshelevich (Vanshel). Learn about the game and download Hexy, a computer program that will play Hex with you!

  • Click here for a citation to a paper about Hex.
  • Also see the Hex entry from freedictionary.com and check out the "External links and References" section for links to Hex programs and more.

Ancient game gets new life. By Burt Lum. The Honolulu Advertiser (April 1, 2003). "I played checkers, chess and Chinese checkers as a child, but lately I have rediscovered the game of konane. The game is played much like checkers but instead of trying to remove all the opponent's game pieces, the winner of konane is the player who has the last move. ... The thought and strategy behind konane have inspired many computer science courses on the subject. Several college classes on artificial intelligence have studied konane."

Renju computer programs. From the Renju International Federation. "Renju is the professional variant of Go-Moku and uses more sophisticated rules. In renju the black player (the beginner of a game) is not allowed to make double-threes, double-fours or more than five in a row."

Shogi.Net "Shogi is a Japanese board game played by two players. The object of the game is to capture the opponent's King. Shogi is played on a nine-by-nine board and each player has twenty pieces. Shogi is much like 'western' chess, but has some very interesting differences. One is that almost all pieces can promote to stronger pieces once they reach the opposite side of the board." You'll finds lots of information here including a collection of Shogi software.

Computer shogi. By Hiroyukia Iida, Makotoa Sakuta, and Jeff Rollason. In Artificial Intelligence, January 2002 (Volume: 134, Issue: 1-2). Excerpt from the Abstract: "This paper describes the current state of the art in computer shogi. Shogi (Japanese chess) promises to be a good vehicle for future research into game-playing programs that are based on tree-searching paradigms. This paper shows where chess and shogi are similar, and details the important areas that make shogi programming of particular interest."

Computer Shogi Association.

Related Pages

Related Web Sites

The University of Alberta GAMES Group. In addition to playing their Hex program (Queenbee) online, you can check out some of their other game projects such as Amazons, Awari, Lines of Action, RoShamBo, Sokoban, and Shogi.