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The 2023 Computer Olympiad ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-02 Hiroyuki Iida, Jonathan Schaeffer, I-Chen Wu
The 26th Computer Olympiad was held online during August/September 2023. With 102 participating programs competing in 32 events, the event was a success.
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From beginner to over champion ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-16 Jaap van den Herik
In the game of chess the notion of beginner has three meanings. In this contribution they are used as a framework for the history of computer chess. The natural line of reasoning will then bring us to main question: Will the game of Chess (soon) be Solved? A positive answer will certainly be seen as a stepping stone for the next question: Can a computer play perfect chess? Of course, this question
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Confirmation of the validity of the HLTV ranking ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-10-20 Jan Rejthar, Vojtěch Kotrba
This paper aims to test the validity of the esports ranking system published by HLTV, which is widely recognized and used for ranking teams in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). The results of the study demonstrate that the HLTV ranking system has a reasonable level of explanatory power in predicting the outcomes of CS:GO matches. Furthermore, the study reveals that the difference in abilities
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The 2022 Ludii AI competition ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Éric Piette, Dennis J.N.J. Soemers, Matthew Stephenson, Cameron Browne
The Ludii AI Competition involves general game playing events focused on developing agents that can play a wide variety of board games. In the 2022 edition, three competition tracks were proposed: Kilothon, General Game Playing, and Learning. All tracks used the Ludii general game system to providethe necessary games and API. This paper reports the motivation, context, and results of the 2022 Ludii
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Automated videogame mechanics generation with XVGDL ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-05-26 Ruiz-Quiñones Jorge, Fernández-Leiva Antonio J.
The automatic generation of game mechanics is nowadays one of the most complex challenges within procedural content generation (PCG), even being considered by itself as automatic game generation in the literature. Previous works have contributed with research papers related to PCG in general, and,in particular, the generation of game mechanics from a specification written in a game description language
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The 2022 World Computer Chess Championships ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-05-17 Jan Krabbenbos, Jonathan Schaeffer
After two years of pandemic-related cancellations, the World Computer Chess Championship returned in July 2022. The title of World Computer Chess Champion, first contested in 1974, was successfully defended by Komodo. The World Chess Software Championship was won by Ginkgo. The World Computer SpeedChess Championship title was shared by Leela Chess Zero and Ginkgo.
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Second player’s cannot-lose strategy for Cylinder-Infinite-Connect-Four with circumference 11 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Yoshiaki Yamaguchi
Cylinder-Infinite-Connect-Four is Connect-Four played on a cylindrical square grid board with infinite row heights and columns that cycle about its width. In previous work, the first player’s cannot-lose strategies were discovered for all circumferences, and the second player’s cannot-lose strategies were discovered for all circumferences except for 6 and 11. In this paper, we show the second player’s
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The 2022 Computer Olympiad ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Hiroyuki Iida, Jonathan Schaeffer, I-Chen Wu
Abstract The 25th Computer Olympiad was held online during July/August 2022. With 53 participating programs competing in 18 events, the event was a success.
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Real-time optical dart detection and scoring algorithm for steel tip dartboards ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-01-25 Ervin Domazet
In this paper, we present a real-time scoring algorithm for steel dartboards, by using five (configurable) low-cost cameras that are positioned parallel to the baseline (surface) of the dartboard. In order to achieve that, firstly the cameras are placed at suggested places. Then, their central focus is configured to look at the center of the dartboard. Subsequently, the dartboard is calibrated and
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An upper bound for the number of chess diagrams without promotion ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-10-07 Daniel Gourion
In 2015, Steinerberger showed that the number of legal chess diagrams without promotion is bounded from above by 2×1040. This number was obtained by restricting both bishops and pawns position and by a precise bound when no chessman has been captured. We improve this estimate and show that the number of legal diagrams is less than 4×1037. To achieve this, we define a graph on the set of diagrams and
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Adaptive rubber-banding system of dynamic difficulty adjustment in racing games ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 Qingwei Mi, Tianhan Gao
Dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) is a highly significant research direction in game AI. Rubber-banding is one of the DDA techniques extensively used in racing games. This paper improves the poor adaptability of the rubber-banding system combined with the game design and development techniques. An Adaptive Rubber-Banding System (ARBS) based on ARBS relationship curve, modular mechanism, as well as
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Nim variants ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-06-23 Mark van den Bergh, Walter Kosters, Flora Spieksma
Combinatorial game theory provides results for the class of two-player, deterministic games with perfect information. With the aim of generalizing this theory to the class of non-perfect information games in mind, we introduce and analyze three variants of the game of Nim. In these variants, the opponent only receives partial information on the move executed by the opponent. We model the variants as
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Editorial: Scrabble, Lamplighter and the Computer Olympiad ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-30 Tristan Cazenave
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Heuri: A scrabble © playing engine using a probability-based heuristic ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Alejandro González Romero, René Alquézar Mancho, Arturo Ramírez Flores, Francisco González Acuña, Ian García Olmedo
The game of Scrabble has been successfully tackled by two engines: Quackle and Maven. They attain the state-of-the-art in Computer Scrabble. These engines use simulation techniques and precalculated values to achieve superhuman play. This paper presents a Scrabble-playing engine, Heuri, which achieves world championship standards when playing in Spanish, and a very high level when playing in English
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The 2021 Computer Olympiad ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-03-23 Hiroyuki Iida, Jonathan Schaeffer, I-Chen Wu
The 24th Computer Olympiad was held online during August/September 2021. With 60 participants competing in 22 events, the event was a success. This raises the question as to whether the ICGA and its members are best served by having future Olympiads online or returning to the in-person format.
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Solving narrow Konane boards ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-18 Jos Uiterwijk
In this paper we investigate the game of Konane, using Combinatorial Game Theory and game-specific solving strategies. We focus on narrow rectangular boards (m×n boards with m⩽4). These are dubbed as Linear Konane, Double Konane, Triple Konane, and Quadruple Konane, respectively. The initial boardcontains black and white stones in a checkered pattern, with a gap of two adjacent empty squares to enable
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The Computer Olympiads 1989–2021 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-17 Jonathan Schaeffer
Abstract The Computer Olympiads have been held 24 times over the past 33 years. This series of events is an important landmark that demonstrates the progress of artificial intelligence technology applied to games. This article presents comparative data on the Olympiads. Some entries contain partial information, while a few have conflicting answers. The author asks the ICGA community for help in ensuring
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Deep learning for general game playing with Ludii and Polygames ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Dennis J.N.J. S, Vegard Mella, Cameron Browne, Olivier Teytaud
Combinations of Monte-Carlo tree search and Deep Neural Networks, trained through self-play, have produced state-of-the-art results for automated game-playing in many board games. The training and search algorithms are not game-specific, but every individual game that these approaches are applied to still requires domain knowledge for the implementation of the game’s rules, and constructing the neural
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Editorial: Ludii, Konane and the Computer Olympiads ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Tristan Cazenave
The first scientific contribution to this issue is Deep Learning for General Game Playing with Ludii and Polygames by Dennis J. N. J. Soemers, Vegard Mella, Cameron Browne and Olivier Teytaud. Polygames is a general Deep Reinforcement Learning engine that combines Monte Carlo Tree Search and Deep Neural Networks trained through self-play. Ludii is a general game system that now contains more than one
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The algebraic solvability of the novel lamplighter puzzle ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Connor Gregor, Daniel Ashlock, Allan R. Willms
In this study, the group of finite cyclic lamplighter states is reinterpreted as the novel lamplighter puzzle. The rules of the puzzle are outlined and related back to properties of the lamplighter group with specific interest placed upon the discussion of which puzzle instances are solvable. The paper shows that, through the use of algebra, many puzzle instances can be identified as solvable without
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Chess without draws ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-03 Guy Haworth, Tristan Cazenave
The prevalence of draws in chess is an increasing concern: in the ICCF’s 2017 ‘MT van Oosteram’ Correspondence event, all 56 games were drawn. This article reports a ‘Mobility Chess’ proposal by ‘Aloril’ which addresses this problem. He prefers to retain his anonymity but should be regarded as theprimary author of this paper. He has defined a logical sequence of increasingly subtle and decreasingly
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The SSDF Chess Engine Rating List, 2021-07 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-10-25 Lars Sandin,Tristan Cazenave
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Guy Haworth, Chess, PuyoPuyo and the Computer Olympiad 2020 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-10-22 Tristan C
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Descent wins five gold medals at the Computer Olympiad ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-10-15 Quentin Cohen-Solal,Tristan Cazenave
Unlike AlphaZero-like algorithms (Silver et al., 2018), the Descent framework uses a variant of Unbounded Minimax (Korf and Chickering, 1996), instead of Monte Carlo Tree Search, to construct the partial game tree used to determine the best action to play and to collect data for learning. During training, at each move, the best sequences of moves are iteratively extended until terminal states. During
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On the power of lookahead in single-player PuyoPuyo ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-10-06 Yasuhiko Takenaga, Sho Kikuchi, Hushan Quan
PuyoPuyo is one of the Tetris-type games, which is dealt with as a single-player game in this paper. The player has a winning strategy if the player can keep playing the game infinitely on a gameboard of a constant height. In this paper, we consider how lookahead of input pieces affects the existence of winning strategies in PuyoPuyo, and show conditions that the player cannot win even with lookahead
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The Computer Olympiad 2020 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-10-04 Hiroyuki Iida, Jonathan Schaeffer, I-Chen Wu
The 23rd Computer Olympiad was held November/December 2020. As a consequence of the global pandemic, for the first time the competitions were fought online. This involved creating new rules that were, in large part, dependent on having the participants cooperate on organizing and conducting the events. The event was a success and will be repeated online in 2021.
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The SSDF Chess Engine Rating List, 2020-12 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Lars Sandin,Guy Haworth
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The TCEC20 Computer Chess Superfinal: A perspective ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 GM Matthew Sadler
Just like last year, Season 20 DivP gathered a host of familiar faces and once again, one of those faces had a facelift! The venerable KOMODO engine had been given an NNUE beauty boost and there was a feeling that KOMODO DRAGON might prove a threat to LEELA’s and STOCKFISH’s customary tickets to the Superfinal. There was also an updated STOOFVLEES to enjoy while ETHEREAL came storming back to DivP
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The 20th Top Chess Engine Championship, TCEC20 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Guy Haworth,Nelson Hernandez
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Chess960 Superhumans! ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 GM Matthew Sadler
Chess960 time at the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC, 2021a)! The more I watch these games, the more I feel that the gap between humans and engines is even higher in Chess960 than in normal chess. I loved the opening phase of this game between two of the less famous engines on show. I’m not sure I would have thought of any of Black’s moves! The game VAJOLET2 – SLOWCHESS BLITZ is available for replay
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Editorial: Mahjong, Sudoku and Chess ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Tristan Cazenave
This first issue of 2021 contains two scientific articles. The first one An Efficient AI-based Method to Play the Mahjong Game with the Knowledge and Game-tree Searching Strategy by Mingyan Wang et al. deals with the imperfect information game of Mahjong which has a huge average size of information sets. In order to approach this popular, complex and challenging game, the authors propose to use opponent
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Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, Edition 5: The bible evolves ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-26 Guy Haworth
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An efficient AI-based method to play the Mahjong game with the knowledge and game-tree searching strategy ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-24 Mingyan Wang, Hang Ren, Wei Huang, Taiwei Yan, Jiewei Lei, Jiayang Wang
The Mahjong game has widely been acknowledged to be a difficult problem in the field of imperfect information games. Because of its unique characteristics of asymmetric, serialized and multi-player game information, conventional methods of dealing with perfect information games are difficult to beapplied directly on the Mahjong game. Therefore, AI (artificial intelligence)-based studies to handle the
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Sudoku Ripeto ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-17 Miguel G. Palomo
We present a variant of Sudoku called Sudoku Ripeto. It seems to be the first to admit any combination of repeated symbols, and includes Sudoku as a proper subset. We present other Sudoku Ripeto families, each with a different repetition pattern. We define Sudoku Ripeto squares and puzzles, prove several solving rules that generalize those for Sudoku, and give sufficient conditions to flexibly solve
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The TCEC19 Computer Chess Superfinal: A perspective ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 G.M. Matthew Sadler
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The 19th Top Chess Engine Championship, TCEC19 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Guy Haworth,Nelson Hernandez
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The ACG 2019 Conference ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Tristan Cazenave,Jaap van den Herik,Abdallah Saffidine,I-Chen Wu
The Advances in Computer Games conference series is a major international forum for researchers and developers interested in all aspects of artificial intelligence and computer game playing. Earlier conferences took place in London (1975), Edinburgh (1978), London (1981, 1984), Noordwijkerhout (1987), London (1990), Maastricht (1993, 1996), Paderborn (1999), Graz (2003), Taipei (2005), Pamplona (2009)
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Polygames: Improved zero learning ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Tristan Cazenave, Yen-Chi Chen, Guan-Wei Chen, Shi-Yu Chen, Xian-Dong Chiu, Julien Dehos, Maria Elsa, Qucheng Gong, Hengyuan Hu, Vasil Khalidov, Cheng-Ling Li, Hsin-I Lin, Yu-Jin Lin, Xavier Martinet, Vegard Mella, Jeremy Rapin, Baptiste Roziere, Gabriel Synnaeve, Fabien Teytaud, Olivier Teytaud, Shi-Cheng Ye, Yi-Jun Ye, Shi-Jim Yen, Sergey Zagoruyko
Since DeepMind's AlphaZero, Zero learning quickly became the state-of-the-art method for many board games. It can be improved using a fully convolutional structure (no fully connected layer). Using such an architecture plus global pooling, we can create bots independent of the board size. The training can be made more robust by keeping track of the best checkpoints during the training and by training
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A polyomino puzzle for arithmetic practice ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-12-08 Jeremy Foxcroft, Daniel Ashlock
Recent trends in mathematics education emphasize discovery learning over drill. This has proven to be a bad idea in some cases, for the simple reason that practice is required to learn basic arithmetic skills. Drills in arithmetic skills can be made interesting through gamification. This study proposes a family of puzzles that gamify arithmetic practice. The puzzles are designed with an evolutionary
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The history of Blitz/Cray-Blitz/Crafty ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Robert Hyatt
This article is a series of anecdotes about the development of several programs that advanced the state of the art in computer chess. The best known is Cray Blitz, which won the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships. However, in terms of overall impact, perhaps Crafty is the most important. As a high-performing open-source program, it has been used by countless number of researchers and
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The TCEC18 Computer Chess Superfinal: A perspective ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Matthew Sadler
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The 18th Top Chess Engine Championship, TCEC18 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Guy Haworth,Nelson Hernandez
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The SSDF Rating List, 2020-07, in memoriam Tony Hedlund ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Lars Sandin,Guy Haworth
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The TCEC17 Computer Chess Superfinal: A perspective ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 G. Matthew Sadler
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The 17th Top Chess Engine Championship, TCEC17 ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Guy Haworth,Nelson Hernandez
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CEN: Thomas Ströhlein’s Endgame Tables, a 50th Anniversary ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Guy Haworth
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Analyzing a variant of Clobber: The game of San Jego ICGA J. (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-10-19 Raphael Thiele, Ingo Althöfer
San Jego is a two-player game with perfect information. It is a variation of the games Clobber (2001) and Cannibal Clobber. Given is a rectangular board with black and white pieces on the cells. Multiple pieces which are stacked on each other are called towers. The piece on top of a tower indicatesher owner. A move consists of picking an own tower and placing it completely on top of an adjacent tower