Awari Solved

Gerard Jendras sent in a submission about applying computing power to an ancient game. The game of Awari has been solved: with perfect play, the game always results in a draw. There is a Java applet to test your skills against.

Re:Freecell Solitaire...

[extra the woos]

Nope, it's not true... If you have windows freecell, go into it and put in select game. Type in "-1" or "-2" and see for yourself :)

3500 year old technology

[cr@ckwhore]

The game is estimated to be 3500+ years old. I'm really astounded by the fact that a perfect game is a draw! 3500 years ago, they created a piece of mathematical perfection... with rocks.

This sounds just like the solution Data used...

[saskboy]

When the android stalemated an opponent at a board game in Star Trek. The best his computer brain could do to beat the alien, was to play ultimately to a draw, and hence the opponent would never win. I guess Star Trek predicted the future of AI pretty well ;-P

Re:Important Step?

[bwt]

I don't quite understand why a big lookup table is an important step for AI.

What AI wants is code that plays, observes the results, and converges to perfect play. One such algorithm has been produced and perfect play has been determined. Now the question is can an algorithm that converges *faster* be found. Learning speed can now be objectively measured, which opens a whole new scientific basis for studying AI.

Re:Freecell Solitaire...

[OldSoldier]

Here's an unsolvable instance [cs.ruu.nl]

It's basically normally sorted, but with aces, twos and eights on the first two rows. Nines and sixes are at the bottom and you can't climb up high enough to get to the aces.

Re:a perfect game

[Old Wolf]

Not so; in some games the second player wins, here's an example:

you have a pile of 21 matches. players alternate turns. on your turn you may take either 1, 2, or 3 matches. whoever takes the last match LOSES.