Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: How do computers do at amazons? Johan?

Author: Pekka Karjalainen

Date: 08:05:44 05/29/03

Go up one level in this thread


On May 28, 2003 at 08:52:07, Dan Andersson wrote:

> The corpus of human knowledge in Amazons is indeed limited by the lack of
>experience. But some tenous comparisions can nevertheless be made. There are
>humans that are quite good at playing most every abstract board game they have
>ever tried to learn. And the best Amazons programs play at least as well as the
>best of those humans. And were evenly matched with the best humans a while ago.

  Interesting. Are you aware of any semiofficial competitions or bets or
anything regarding Amazons human vs. comp play?

> There are a couple of ways for the programs to play well. Graph dBs for
>evaluating local games. Using multiple measures of mobility/distance both local
>and global to mark squares as owned. This works because making a suboptimal move
>in open positions almost invariably decreases the mobility measure. And there
>are also a few heuristic values for getting an Amazon blocked off at different
>stages of the game. And search is either a full width with extensions based on
>history and volatility of position or selective with few extensions.

  So, it would be only fair to point out that the programmers are on their own
too when it comes to writing an Amazons program, due to the lack of literature
on strategy.  This makes the comparison of human and computer skill in Amazons
more interesting than what I first thought.

  Good point, Dan.   Thank you.

>
>MvH Dan Andersson

Pekka



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.