Arimaa Computer Championship and Challenge 2005
From January 10 to January 15 the Selection match of the 2005 Arimaa Computer Championship took place. It was won by the program Bomb (by David Fotland).
From February 7 to February 18 the 2005 Arimaa Challenge match took place. This challenge match was played between Frank Heinemann and the program Bomb.
The outcome of the challenge match is: 7 points for Heinemann and 1 point for the program Bomb.
background
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.- A variable opening position: players are free to choose the place of the pieces within the first two rows of the board.
- 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 takes place in January and February 2005.
The tournament details and rules are published at: arimaa.com/arimaa/wcc/2005/.
For more information on Arimaa see http://www.arimaa.com/, for details on the 2005 challenge see arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/2005/.
The 2005 Challenge Match
The challenge match wasl played between Frank Heinemann and the program Bomb by David Fotland. The match consisted of eight games, four with Bomb playing gold and four with Bomb playing Silver.The results are as follows: Heinemann 7 points, Bomb 1 point.
| Game logs | ||
| Monday, February 7 | Bomb - Heinemann | 0 - 1 (69 moves) |
| Tuesday, February 8 | Heinemann - Bomb | 1 - 0 (80 moves) |
| Thursday, February 10 | Bomb - Heinemann | 0 - 1 (61 moves) |
| Friday, February 11 | Heinemann - Bomb | 0 - 1 (57 moves) |
| Wednesday, February 16 | Bomb - Heinemann | 0 - 1 (69 moves) |
| Tuesday, February 15 | Heinemann - Bomb | 1 - 0 (68 moves) |
| Thursday, February 17 | Bomb - Heinemann | 0 - 1 (60 moves) |
| Friday, February 18 | Heinemann - Bomb | 1 - 0 (52 moves) |
The 2005 Selection Match
Participants
The four elected Arimaa bots that participated in the selection match are:| Name | Rating | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Bomb | 1906 | David Fotland |
| Clueless | 1659 | Jeff Bacher |
| GnoBot | 1562 | Toby Hudson |
| Loc | 1434 | Gerhard Trippen |
Results
The selection match was a double round-robin tournament. A win is 1 point, a loss is 0 points, and a draw is 0.5 points. In case of a tie, the program with the fewest number of moves per game averaged for all wins and draws would be declared the winner. The program that gained the most points won the match and will participate in the Arimaa Challenge against the human player. The results of the selection match are as follows:
| Monday, January 10 | 13.00h | Bomb - Clueless: | 1 - 0 (47 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Gno - Loc | 1 - 0 (42 moves) | ||
| Tuesday, January 11 | 13.00h | Clueless - Gno: | 1 - 0 (31 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Loc - Bomb: | 0 - 1 (31 moves) | ||
| Wednesday, January 12 | 13.00h | Bomb - Gno: | 1 - 0 (21 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Clueless - Loc: | 1 - 0 (37 moves) | ||
| Thursday, January 13 | 13.00h | Loc - Gno: | 0 - 1 (51 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Clueless - Bomb: | 1 - 0 (50 moves) | ||
| Friday, January 14 | 13.00h | Loc - Clueless: | 0 - 1 (34 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Gno - Bomb: | 0 - 1 (24 moves) | ||
| Saturday, January 15 | 13.00h | Bomb - Loc: | 1 - 0 (37 moves) | |
| 20.00h | Gno - Clueless | 0 - 1 (67 moves) | ||
Tournament Table
| Bomb | Clueless | Gno | Loc | Points | Moves* | Rank | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bomb | X | 1-0 | 1-0 | 1-0 | 5 | 32.0 (160) | 1 | |
| Clueless | 1-0 | X | 1-0 | 1-0 | 5 | 43.8 (219) | 2 | |
| Gno | 0-1 | 0-1 | X | 1-0 | 2 | 46.5 (93) | 3 | |
| Loc | 0-1 | 0-1 | 0-1 | X | 0 | - | 4 |
Both Bomb (Fotland) and Clueless (Bacher) reached 5 points. However, Bomb needed only 32.0 moves on average in the five won games, whereas Clueless needed 43.8 moves on average. Therefore, Bomb is declared winner of the selection match and will participate in the 2005 Challenge Match.