Arimaa Information

Topic Editor: Jeroen Donkers

Arimaa is a new chess-like strategic board game invented by Omar and Aamir Syed. The game differs from chess in (among others) the following two ways.

  1. A variable opening position: players are free to choose the place of the pieces within the first two rows of the board.
  2. Complex moves: each move consists of 4 piece-movements that not only include shifts or captures, but also pulling, pushing and immobilization of opponent pieces.

In order to stimulate AI-research, the inventors of Arimaa called out the Arimaa Challenge: to the first person, company or organization that builds a program that defeats a chosen human Arimaa player in an official Arimaa challenge match before 2020, a prize of $ 10.000 USD will be awarded.

Each year a match will be organized. The match consists of two parts: first a selection match will be played between computer programs to select the best computer program, then the best program plays a match against a chosen human Arimaa player. The first challenge took place in 2004, the second challenge took place in January and February 2005.

For more information on Arimaa see http://www.arimaa.com/