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Advances in Computer Games

ACG 2015: Advances in Computer Games pp 198–209Cite as

Feature Strength and Parallelization of Sibling Conspiracy Number Search

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9525))

Abstract

Recently we introduced Sibling Conspiracy Number Search — an algorithm based not on evaluation of leaf states of the search tree but, for each node, on relative evaluation scores of all children of that node — and implemented an SCNS Hex bot. Here we show the strength of SCNS features: most critical is to initialize leaves via a multi-step process. Also, we show a simple parallel version of SCNS: it scales well for 2 threads but less efficiently for 4 or 8 threads.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hex has a good local heuristic. Shannon built an analogue circuit to play the connection game Bridg-it, with moves scored by voltage drop [7]. Adding links between virtual connected cells [2] improves the heuristic, which is reliable among siblings [9].

  2. 2.

    This is the current likely range of the final root minimax value. It is analogous to the aspiration window of \(\alpha \beta \) search.

  3. 3.

    Another approach is to dynamically partition the CNS tree and evaluate subproblems in parallel. Lorenz achieved this for the restriction of CNS to 2 conpirators, i.e., effectively bounding proof function numbers at 2 [14].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Jakub Pawlewicz

  2. Computing Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Ryan B. Hayward

Authors
  1. Jakub Pawlewicz
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  2. Ryan B. Hayward
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Correspondence to Ryan B. Hayward .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden University , Leiden, The Netherlands

    Aske Plaat

  2. Leiden University , Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jaap van den Herik

  3. Leiden University , Leiden, The Netherlands

    Walter Kosters

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Pawlewicz, J., Hayward, R.B. (2015). Feature Strength and Parallelization of Sibling Conspiracy Number Search. In: Plaat, A., van den Herik, J., Kosters, W. (eds) Advances in Computer Games. ACG 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9525. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27992-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27992-3_18

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27991-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27992-3

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