Research Seminar - December 07, 2001

Abstract:

In 1994 Chinook, developed by Jonathan Schaeffer, became the world checkers champion defeating Marion Tinsley who had been the world champion for 40 years. Recently David Fogel developed a checkers player that was able to compete at grandmaster level. Whilst Schaeffer and Fogel have achieved similar feats it has been done in two distinctly different ways.

Schaeffer injected as much domain knowledge into Chinook as he could, so much so that in some games Chinook was able to play from its opening game database directly into its end game database without having to carry out any search in the middle game. The approach used by Fogel did not provide any domain knowledge to the game playing agent. Instead the agent had to develop its own strategies using neural networks, evolutionary strategies and coevolution.

In this talk, Graham Kendall will discuss the evolutionary approach to game playing and highlight some of his recent work which includes publications on chess and poker and a recently submitted paper which considers the game of awari.