Abstract
Amazons is a fascinating game that shares properties of chess and Go. We have written a computer program that plays Amazons. This paper reveals the secret of this program: its evaluation function. We describe it by explicit formulas, mention the ideas and goals behind these formulas, and discuss possible refinements. By analysing a tournament game of Amazong against the former computer world champion 8QP we illustrate how the new features of our evaluation function can lead to victory.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
References
Berlekamp, E. R. (2000). Sums of 2 x n amazons. In Bruss, F. T. and le Cam, L., editors, Game Theory, Optimal Stopping, Probability and Statistics: Papers in honor of Thomas S. Ferguson, Institute of Mathematical Statistics Lecture Notes — Monograph Ser., volume 35, pages 1–34.
Buro, M. (2001). Simple amazons endgames and their connection to hamilton circuits in cubic subgrid graphs, lecture notes in computer science. In Marsland, T.A. and Frank, I., editors, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computers and Games, volume 2063, pages 250–261.
Hashimoto, T., Kajihara, Y., Sasaki, N., Iida, H., and Yoshimura, J., (2001). An evaluation function for amazons. In van den Herik, H.J. and Monien, B., editors, Advances in Computers Games 9, pages 191–202. IKAT, Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Lieberum, J. Selective search in amazons. Available at http://www.math.unibas.ch/ylieberum/amazong/amazong.html. Powerpoint presentation used in talks at the Universities of Jena and Edmonton.
Lincke, T. R. (2001). Strategies for the automatic construction of opening books. In Marsland, T.A. and Frank, I., editors, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computers and Games, CGOO, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2063, pages 74–86.
Lorentz, R. (2002). Finding territory in amazons. In Uiterwijk, J., editor, The Seventh Computer Olympiad Computer-Games Workshop Proceedings, Technical Reports in Computer Science, Universiteit Maastricht.
Marsland, T. (1986). A review of game-tree-pruning. ICCA Journal, 9 (1): 3–19.
Müller, M. and Tegos, T. (1996). Experiments in computer amazons. In Nowakowski, R.J., editor, More Games of No Chance, pages 243–260.
Snatzke, G. (1996). Exhaustive search in the game amazons. In Nowakowski, R.J., editor, More Games of No Chance, pages 261–278.
Snatzke, G. (2002). New results in exhaustive search in the game amazons. University of Jena preprint.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lieberum, J. (2004). An Evaluation Function for the Game of Amazons. In: Van Den Herik, H.J., Iida, H., Heinz, E.A. (eds) Advances in Computer Games. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 135. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35706-5_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35706-5_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-4424-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35706-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive