ICGA

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ICGA logo The ICGA, the International Computer Games Association, was founded as the ICCA in 1977 by computer chess programmers to organize championship events for computer programs and to facilitate the sharing of technical knowledge via the ICGA Journal.

The Aims of the ICGA are#

• to publish a quarterly ICGA Journal [1]

• to hold regular World Computer-Chess Championships, Computer Olympiads, and Advances in Computer Games conferences
• to strengthen ties and to promote cooperation between computer-game researchers
• to introduce computer games to the games world
• to support national computer-games organizations and computer-games tournament organizers

The Board of the ICGA#

• President: Jonathan Schaeffer [2]
• Vice-President: Ryan Hayward
• Vice-President Asian Countries: Shun-Chin Hsu
• Secretary-Treasurer: Hiroyuki Iida
• Programmers Representative: Mark Lefler

ICCA / ICGA Presidents#

| President | Org. | from | until

ICGA Events#

[3]

• Advances in Computer Games
• Computer Olympiad
• World Chess Software Championship since 2010
• World Computer Chess Championship

Tournament Rules

• World Microcomputer Chess Championship until 2001

Investigations#

• ICGA Investigations

ICGA Topics#

• ICGA: Chess Endgames compiled by Guy Haworth and colleagues » Endgame Tablebases
• ICGA: Lines of Action by Mark Winands » Lines of Action
• ICGA: Losing Chess by Guy Haworth
• ICGA: Roshambo by Guy Haworth

History and Purpose of the ICGA#

Renamed into the ICGA in 2002 [4] , the association now more broadly fosters the Computer Games community through its relationships with Computer Science, Commercial and Game organizations throughout the world. The **ICGA’**s broader scope reflects the more general way in which computer-game capability contributes to Artificial Intelligence and to the human experience of game-playing.

Quotes#

Robert Hyatt#

Robert Hyatt, 1997 in a rgcc post [5] :

I was there when [Barend Swets](Barend_Swets "Barend Swets") (Believe the spelling is correct) proposed forming this organization in [1977](WCCC_1977 "WCCC 1977") in Toronto. I was one of many that stood up and said "yes, I'll join." However, others stood up and said I'll not only join, I'll help for nothing, and the [ICCA](ICCA "ICCA") was formed, and continues to work this way. 

Jaap van den Herik#

Jaap van den Herik in 2001 in The Bell Captain [6] :

In 1977, the ICCA was founded during the [Second World Computer-Chess Championship in Toronto](WCCC_1977 "WCCC 1977"). The organisation was the brainchild of [Barend Swets](Barend_Swets "Barend Swets") and many participants supported the idea, among them [Ken Thompson](Ken_Thompson "Ken Thompson") who then tied for 4th place amongst 16 participants with his program [BELLE](Belle "Belle"). [CHESS 4.6](Chess_(Program) "Chess (Program)") won the title but Ken received credit for BELLE's KQKR endgame play against [IGM Walter Browne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Browne) (Fenner, 1979) <a id="cite-note-7" href="#cite-ref-7">[7]</a> <a id="cite-note-8" href="#cite-ref-8">[8]</a> . Further, Ken agreed to serve as Secretary and Treasurer of the new organisation alongside [Ben Mittman](Ben_Mittman "Ben Mittman"), the first ICCA President, and did so successfully and with much enthusiasm for six years. 

Best-Publication Awards#

Mephisto Best-Publication Award#

Winners of the Mephisto Best-Publication Award by Hegener & Glaser, 1988-1992:

• Thomas Anantharaman, Murray Campbell, Feng-hsiung Hsu (1988). Singular extensions: Adding Selectivity to Brute-Force Searching. AAAI Spring Symposium, Computer Game Playing, also published in ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4, republished (1990) in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 99-109
• Don Beal (Editor) (1989). Advances in Computer Chess 5.
• Feng-hsiung Hsu (1990). Large Scale Parallelization of Alpha-Beta Search: An Algorithmic and Architectural Study with Computer Chess. Ph.D. thesis, Technical report CMU-CS-90-108, Carnegie Mellon University
• Tony Scherzer, Linda Scherzer, Dean Tjaden (1990). Learning in Bebe. Computers, Chess, and Cognition  » Bebe
• Thomas Anantharaman (1991). Extension Heuristics. ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2
• Jos Uiterwijk (1992). The Countermove Heuristic. ICCA Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1

Novag Best-Publication Award#

Winners of the Novag Best-Publication Award, 1992-1996:

• Ken Thompson (1992). Chess Endgames Vol. 3. CD-ROM, AT&T Bell Laboratories
• Rainer Feldmann (1993). Game Tree Search on Massively Parallel Systems. Ph.D. thesis, pdf
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, Arie de Bruin (1994, 2014). A New Paradigm for Minimax Search. TR-CS 94-18, University of Alberta, arXiv:1404.1515
• Robert Hyatt (1995-1996). The Chess Program Crafty, especially by making it available to anyone who wants it

ChessBase Best-Publication Award#

Winners of the ChessBase Best-Publication Award 1999-2010:

• Ernst Heinz (1999). Scalable Search in Computer Chess.
• Eugene Nalimov (2000). Endgame Tablebases
• John Romein (2001). Multigame - An Environment for Distributed Game-Tree Search. Ph.D. thesis, Vrije Universiteit, supervisor Henri Bal, pdf
• Brian Sheppard (2002). Towards Perfect Play of Scrabble. Ph.D. thesis, Maastricht University, pdf
• Jeroen Donkers (2003). Nosce Hostem - Searching with Opponent Models. Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit Maastricht, pdf
• Mark Winands (2004). Informed Search in Complex Games. Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit Maastricht, pdf
• Akihiro Kishimoto (2005). Correct and Efficient Search Algorithms in the Presence of Repetitions. Ph.D. thesis, University of Alberta, pdf
• Darse Billings (2006). Algorithms and Assessment in Computer Poker. Ph.D. thesis, University of Alberta
• Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Björnsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (2007). Checkers is Solved. Science, Vol. 317, no. 5844

Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (2005). Solving Checkers. IJCAI 2005, pdf

• Guillaume Chaslot, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik, Bruno Bouzy (2008). Progressive Strategies for Monte-Carlo Tree Search. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 4, No. 3
• Olivier Teytaud, Jean-Yves Audibert, Guillaume Chaslot, Louis Chatriot, Christophe Fiter, Sylvain Gelly, Rémi Munos, Jean-Baptiste Hoock, Julien Pérez, Arpad Rimmel, Yizao Wang, Thomas Hérault, Vincent Danjean (2009). MoGo that won: one 19x19 Go game with 6-stone handicap vs a professional player, one 19x19 Go game with 7-stone handicap vs a professional player, one 9x9 Go game as Black vs a professional player.
• Shih-Chieh Huang, Rémi Coulom (2010). Erica, the Go Program that won the Go 2010 Computer Olympiad.

Best-Publication Award#

Winners of the Best-Publication Award 2011 …

• Sylvain Gelly, David Silver (2011). Monte-Carlo tree search and rapid action value estimation in computer Go. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 175, No. 11
• Yoji Ojima, Hideki Kato (2012). Go progam Zen, that beat a 9 dan professional player ( Takemiya Masaki) in a 19x19 Go game with 4 stones of handicap on March 17, 2012.
• Abdallah Saffidine (2013). Solving Games and All That. Ph.D. thesis, Université Paris-Dauphine, advisor Tristan Cazenave, pdf
• Gerd Isenberg, Mark Lefler (2014). The Chess Programming Wiki.. (Thank you)

ICGA Journal Awards#

In 1992, a novel Award was instituted by the ICCA, the ICCA Journal Award. The Award is to be adjudicated annually to a first-time author for the best article in the ICCA/ICGA Journal in the year under consideration.

| Year | Award Winner | Article | Published in

Forum Posts#

• ICGA Olympiad 2013: Yokohama, Aug 12-18! by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, December 21, 2012 [9]
• ICGA Computer Olympiad 2013: Yokohama, Aug 12-18 by Harm Geert Muller, Rybka Forum, December 21, 2012
• WCCC 2015 Leiden by Stefano Gemma, CCC, January 14, 2015
• ICGA Facebook page by Harvey Williamson, CCC, July 06, 2017
• Would the ICGA have accepted today’s NNUE engines? by Madeleine Birchfield, CCC, July 05, 2021 » NNUE

External Links#

• New ICGA website
• ICGA Tournament Database
• ICGA - Home | Facebook [10]
• International Computer Games Association from Wikipedia
• International Computer Games Association (ICGA), an Affiliated International Organizations of FIDE

References#

1. ↑ ICGA Reference Database
2. ↑ A NEW PRESIDENT - Announcement by David Levy by Mark Lefler, December 11, 2018
3. ↑ ICGA Tournament Database
4. ↑ ICCA BECOMES ICGA by David Levy, President of the ICGA, ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 - September 2002
5. ↑ Does ICCA publish dissenting views?, post #18 by Robert Hyatt, January 22, 1997, rgcc
6. ↑ Jaap van den Herik (2001). The Bell Captain. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2
7. ↑ Walter Shawn Browne vs Belle (Computer) - Queen vs Rook exhibition 1978 from chessgames.com
8. ↑ QUEEN vs. ROOK by Warren Stenberg and Edware J. Conway, reprinted from the January, 1979 issue of the Minnesota Chess Journal, The Usenet Oldnews Archive, Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman » ACM 1978, Belle, Endgame Tablebases, Walter Browne
9. ↑ Yokohama 2013 (ICGA Tournaments)
10. ↑ ICGA Facebook page by Harvey Williamson, CCC, July 06, 2017

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