Arimaa

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The players begin by setting up their pieces however they choose on their home rows [1] Arimaa,

is a two-player zero-sum and perfect information abstract strategy board game, that can be played using the same equipment as chess, invented by Omar and Aamir Syed. In 2002, Omar Syed published the rules to Arimaa [2] and announced a $10,000 prize, available annually until 2020, for the first computer program (running on standard hardware) able to defeat each of three top-ranked human players in a three game series [3]. Due to its huge Branching Factor of about 17,281 [4], Arimaa is hard to play for computers. In 2015, David J. Wu won the Arimaa Challenge and the then $12,000 USD prize with his program Sharp [5], major topic in the ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1.

Arimaa Pieces#

| Image | Name | Number | Represented by Chess Piece

Publications#

[6]

2003 …#

• Omar Syed, Aamir Syed (2003). Arimaa - A New Game Designed to be Difficult for Computers. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2
• David Fotland (2004). Building a World-Champion Arimaa Program. CG 2004, word doc
• Omar Syed, Jeroen Donkers (2004). The Arimaa match. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2

2005 …#

• Haizhi Zhong (2005). Building a Strong Arimaa-playing Program. word doc
• Omar Syed, Jeroen Donkers (2005). The 2nd Arimaa Challenge Match. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2
• Christ-Jan Cox (2006). Analysis and Implementation of the Game Arimaa. Master’s thesis pdf, Appendix B pdf
• Nicolas A. Barriga (2006). Arimaa, the Game of Real Intelligence? pdf
• Omar Syed (2009). The 6th Annual Arimaa Computer World Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1
• Omar Syed (2009). The 6th Annual Arimaa Challenge Match. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No 2
• Gerhard Trippen (2009). Plans, Patterns and Move Categories Guiding a Highly Selective Search. Advances in Computer Games 12, pdf
• Sam Miller (2009). Researching and Implementing a Computer Agent to Play Arimaa. Thesis pdf
• José Roberto Mercado Vega, Zvi Retchkiman Königsberg (2009). Modeling the Game of Arimaa with Linguistic Geometry. CIG'09, pdf » Linguistic Geometry [7]
• José Roberto Mercado Vega, Zvi Retchkiman Königsberg (2009). A Linguistic Geometry Model for an Arimaa Bot. Neural, Parallel, and Scientific Computations, Vol. 17, pdf
• Tomas Kozelek (2009). Methods of MCTS and the game Arimaa. Master’s thesis, pdf
• Fritz Juhnke (2009). Beginning Arimaa: Chess Reborn Beyond Computer Comprehension. Flying Camel Publications. ISBN 0-9824-2740-9
• Sam Miller (2009). Researching and Implementing a Computer Agent to Play Arimaa. Thesis, University of Southampton, pdf

2010 …#

• Stefano Carlini (2010). Arimaa, a New Challenge for Artificial Intelligence. M.Sc. thesis, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, pdf
• David J. Wu (2011). Move Ranking and Evaluation in the Game of Arimaa. B.Sc. thesis, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pdf
• Tomáš Jakl (2011). Arimaa Challenge – Comparison Study of MCTS versus Alpha-Beta Methods. B.Sc. thesis, Charles University in Prague, pdf
• Thitipong Kanjanapa, Kanako Komiya, Yoshiyuki Kotani (2012). Design and Implementation of Bonanza Method for the Evaluation in the Game of Arimaa. IPSJ SIG Technical Report, Vol. 2012-GI-27, No. 4, pdf
• Tomáš Hřebejk (2013). Arimaa challenge - Static Evaluation Function. Master Thesis, Charles University in Prague, pdf » Automated Tuning [8]

2015 …#

• Omar Syed (2015). The Arimaa Challenge: From Inception to Completion. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1
• David Fotland (2015). Computer Arimaa: The Beginning. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1
• David J. Wu (2015). Designing a Winning Arimaa Program. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1, pdf [9]
• Andy Lewis (2015). Game Over, Arimaa? ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 [10]

Forum Posts#

• When will a computer be better at Arimaa then a human? by George Pichard, CCC, October 28, 2013

External Links#

• Arimaa - Intuitively simple … intellectually challenging
• Arimaa from Wikipedia
• Arimaa - Wikibooks
• ArimaaWiki
• Janzert’s Arimaa Projects by Brian Haskin
• Arimaa software for download by David Fotland
• The Arimaa Public License
• The Arimaa Challenge

How to Develop an Arimaa Bot

• Arimaa, Computers and the Future of Chess by Andy Lewis, Kingpin Chess Magazine, February 06, 2015
• Arimaa: Game Over? by Andy Lewis, Kingpin Chess Magazine, July 11, 2015 [11]

References#

1. ↑ Arimaa - Rules from Wikipedia
2. ↑ Arimaa Game Rules
3. ↑ Omar Syed and Aamir Syed (2003). Arimaa - A New Game Designed to be Difficult for Computers. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2
4. ↑ Brian “Janzert” Haskin (2006). Arimaa Branching Factor
5. ↑ The 2015 Arimaa Challenge
6. ↑ Arimaa - Academic Papers and Presentations
7. ↑ The Home Page of Linguistic Geometry by Boris Stilman
8. ↑ thesis on eval function learning in Arimaa by Jon Dart, CCC, December 04, 2015
9. ↑ Paper describing “Sharp” the program that won the Arimaa Challenge by ddyer, Game-AI Forum, January 14, 2016
10. ↑ slightly adapted version of Arimaa: Game Over? by Andy Lewis, Kingpin Chess Magazine, July 11, 2015
11. ↑ Andy Lewis (2015). Game Over, Arimaa? ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1

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