The rules of Amazons will be as given by Sasaki & Iida, "Report on the First Open Computer Amazon Championship", ICCA Journal, Vol. 22 No.1 pp 41-44, 1999.
Briefly:
The game is played on a 10x10 square board. In the initial position, White has 4 queens placed at a4, d1, g1 & j4, and Black has 4 queens placed at a7, d10, g10 & j7. White plays first. Queens move in any vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line, as many squares as they wish, provided the destination square and those it slides over are all unoccupied. A move in the game consists of 2 steps. (1) Moving any queen that can still move. (2) blocking a square now reachable in a single queen move from the destination square of the moved queen. Once blocked, squares are never unblocked. The first player unable to move loses. For tie-breaking purposes, the winner is credited with a "territory" score. This is the number of vacant squares that could be reached by a winner's queen, given unlimited further moves.
Each program must display the current position on the screen for the benefit of the tournament director. Programs must be able to retract moves to correct operator errors under the instruction of the TD.
Each program must complete its moves for one game in XXX minutes. (XXX is still to be determined and will depend on number of entrants and available computers as well as participant opinion. If you are entering, or might enter, the computer Amazons tournament, please email your opinion, giving the rate of play you would prefer, to olympiad@dcs.qmw.ac.uk. XXX=30 is the organisers preference.)
Each program must produce a file on disc with the moves of the game, to give to the TD after the game.
Each tournament encounter will be two games - black and white for each player.
The tournament will be all-play-all if there are 6 or fewer participants. If there are more than 6 participants it will be a 5-round Swiss.
Each game will score 1 points for the winning player, 1/2 point for each player if drawn, and 0 points for the losing player.
Tournament ranking will be by (1) points scored (2) sum of opponents points scored (3) sum of territory squares at end of each won game.