2009 Computer Stratego World Championship

From StrategoUSA

The 2009 Computer Stratego World Championship will be held during the week of November 23. This will be a free tournament open to any programmer whose application supports the Stratego AI API and abides by the game rules.

The tournament will be hosted by Metaforge (http://www.metaforge.net), an online, multiplayer gaming site. Bots will play each other by means of the Metaforge client, exactly as do humans. This year, all the bots will run on a single computer in a continuous sequence of matches until the tournament is complete. Viewers will be able to logon to Metaforge and watch games as they are played, or replay completed games at a later time.

Contents 1 News 2 Committee Members 3 Objective 4 Tournament Rules 5 Stratego AI API 6 Additional Resources 6.1 Games Archive 7 Tournament Roster 7.1 Probe 7.2 Master of the Flag 1 7.3 Master of the Flag 2 7.4 Invincible 7.5 Reveal Your Rank! 7.6 Hobbes 7.7 Hayati 7.8 Zixerqath 8 Schedule and Results 8.1 Schedule by Rounds 8.2 Match Cross Table 8.3 Score Summary

[edit] News

• 2008-12-12: Tournament announced

[edit] Committee Members

These are the members of the tournament committee:

Vincent de Boer
2007 World Champion "human" Stratego & Author of Invincible
vdeboer_nl@yahoo.com

Imer Satz
Author of Probe
imer@imersatz.com

Chip McVey
Founder of Metaforge
chip@metaforge.net

Sven Jug
Author of Master of the Flag
sven_jug@yahoo.com

[edit] Objective

The goal of the tournament is to encourage development of increasingly superior Stratego artificial intelligence implementations. The game is rich for research into game play and decision making with limited information, and we hope that gathering the best implementations available will foster collaboration and increase quality. The tournament also seeks to promote the popularity of the game in general.

[edit] Tournament Rules

The tournament will consist of five games between each pair of participating programs. Scoring will be as follows:

Win	6
Draw	3
Loss	1
Forfeit	0

A forfeit will result from a program crash, illegal move, illegal setup or other condition that terminates the game abnormally.

This is the official Stratego tournament scoring, which is equivalent to (W-D-L) 5 - 2 - 0 with 1 point for playing, or 1 - 0.4 - 0 with 0.2 points for playing. This gives a small drawing penalty (draw is valued less than half a win) which should promote aggressive play.

If, at the end of the tournament, two programs have equal scores, their point totals from the final session will be used as a tie breaker, followed by the previous session and so forth. This will reward improvements programmers have made during the tournament by placing greater value on the later sessions.

Each game will be played according to the Game Rules.

[edit] Stratego AI API

The Stratego AI API enables Stratego programs to play on Metaforge, using the Metaforge client application. The API supports implemtations in Java, C++ and a newly developed adapter is available for support of implementations in web service technology. The Stratego AI API development kits are available for free download from the Resource Download Page

The easiest way to develop a Stratego AI implementation is to use Java as the programming language. An open source compiler can be downloaded from www.eclipse.org. A java prototype for a "random player" is available for interested programmers and can be a big time saver for getting started on a Stratego AI implementation.

[edit] Additional Resources

[edit] Games Archive

There is available an online archive of over 100,000 Classic Stratego games between human opponents. The archive can be useful to perform statistical evaluations of setups and game moves. The archive can be downloaded from www.gravon.de/strados2/files/. Files are in the StraDoS 2 (Stratego DOcumentation System version 2) format.

Following is an example setup entry:

content="EBFBDBMBEEEDBHDHBIGEGDJCDFHDDDHFIKGILJGFAA__AA__AAAA__AA__AARTUPSTPUTRPSWQPSXPSPNQPOVQPVQNNRNQYTNNUR"

Each character represents a position on the board:

Flag

Bomb

Marshal

General

Colonel

Major

Captain

Lieutenant

Sergeant

Miner

Scout

Spy

Empty

Island

M

B

L

K

J

I

H

G

F

E

D

C

A

_

Y

N

X

W

V

U

T

S

R

Q

P

O

[edit] Tournament Roster

[edit] Probe

Defending 2007 & 2008 Computer Stratego World Champion

Probe
Programmer	Imer Satz
Nationality	American
Year Created	1983
Last Update	2009
Company/Affiliation	Imersatz GmbH
Link	http://www.probe.imersatz.com/

[edit] Master of the Flag 1

Master of the Flag
Programmer	Sven Jug
Nationality	German/American
Year Created	2004
Last Update	2008
Company/Affiliation	Jayoogee.com
Link	http://www.jayoogee.com/

[edit] Master of the Flag 2

Master of the Flag
Programmer	Sven Jug
Nationality	German/American
Year Created	2004
Last Update	2009
Company/Affiliation	Jayoogee.com
Link	http://www.jayoogee.com/

[edit] Invincible

Invincible
Programmer	Vincent de Boer
Nationality	Dutch
Year Created	2007
Last Update	2007
Company/Affiliation	TU Delft
Link	http://www.kbs.twi.tudelft.nl/Publications/MSc/2008-deBoer-Msc.html

[edit] Reveal Your Rank!

Reveal Your Rank!
Programmer	Raimonds Rudmanis
Nationality	Latvian
Year Created	2001
Last Update	2006
Company/Affiliation	None
Link	http://www.yellowgames.com/

[edit] Hobbes

Hobbes
Programmer	Maarten Schadd
Nationality	Dutch
Year Created	2008
Last Update	2009
Company/Affiliation	Maastricht University
Link	http://www.personeel.unimaas.nl/maarten-schadd/Homepage/index.html

[edit] Hayati

Hayati
Programmer	Omer Weissbrod & Ziv Cohen
Nationality	Israeli
Year Created	2009
Last Update	2009
Company/Affiliation	None
Link	None

[edit] Zixerqath

Zixerqath
Programmer	Matt Stowe
Nationality	American
Year Created	2008
Last Update	2009
Company/Affiliation	None
Link	http://mattstowe.webs.com/

[edit] Schedule and Results

[edit] Schedule by Rounds

Round	Match	Creator	Wins	Joiner	Wins	Draws
1	1	Hayati	1	Zixerqath	4	0
1	2	Hobbes	1	Reveal Your Rank!	4	0
1	3	Invincible	2	Probe	3	0
1	4	Master of the Flag 1	0	Master of the Flag 2	5	0
2	1	Reveal Your Rank!	5	Hayati	0	0
2	2	Zixerqath	0	Probe	5	0
2	3	Hobbes	0	Master of the Flag 2	5	0
2	4	Invincible	5	Master of the Flag 1	0	0
3	1	Hayati	1	Probe	4	0
3	2	Reveal Your Rank!	0	Master of the Flag 2	5	0
3	3	Zixerqath	1	Master of the Flag 1	4	0
3	4	Hobbes	0	Invincible	5	0
4	1	Master of the Flag 2	5	Hayati	0	0
4	2	Probe	5	Master of the Flag 1	0	0
4	3	Reveal Your Rank!	1	Invincible	4	0
4	4	Zixerqath	2	Hobbes	3	0
5	1	Hayati	0	Master of the Flag 1	2	3
5	2	Master of the Flag 2	3	Invincible	2	0
5	3	Probe	5	Hobbes	0	0
5	4	Reveal Your Rank!	2	Zixerqath	3	0
6	1	Invincible	5	Hayati	0	0
6	2	Master of the Flag 1	3	Hobbes	1	1
6	3	Master of the Flag 2	5	Zixerqath	0	0
6	4	Probe	4	Reveal Your Rank!	1	0
7	1	Hayati	1	Hobbes	4	0
7	2	Invincible	5	Zixerqath	0	0
7	3	Master of the Flag 1	3	Reveal Your Rank!	2	0
7	4	Master of the Flag 2	2	Probe	0	3

[edit] Match Cross Table

Match results are shown as W-D-L in alphabetical order.

AI Program	W	D	L	Hayati	Hobbes	Invincible	MasterFlag1	MasterFlag2	Probe	RevealYourRank	Zixerqath
Hayati	3	3	29	x	1-0-4	0-0-5	0-3-2	0-0-5	1-0-4	0-0-5	1-0-4
Hobbes	9	1	25	4-0-1	x	0-0-5	1-1-3	0-0-5	0-0-5	1-0-4	3-0-2
Invincible	28	0	7	5-0-0	5-0-0	x	5-0-0	2-0-3	2-0-3	4-0-1	5-0-0
MasterFlag1	12	4	19	2-3-0	3-1-1	0-0-5	x	0-0-5	0-0-5	3-0-2	4-0-1
MasterFlag2	30	3	2	5-0-0	5-0-0	3-0-2	5-0-0	x	2-3-0	5-0-0	5-0-0
Probe	26	3	6	4-0-1	5-0-0	3-0-2	5-0-0	0-3-2	x	4-0-1	5-0-0
RevealYourRank	15	0	20	5-0-0	4-0-1	1-0-4	2-0-3	0-0-5	1-0-4	x	2-0-3
Zixerqath	10	0	25	4-0-1	2-0-3	0-0-5	1-0-4	0-0-5	0-0-5	3-0-2	x

[edit] Score Summary

AI Program	Games Played	Total Score	Ranking
MasterFlag2	35	191	1
Invincible	35	175	2
Probe	35	171	3
RevealYourRank	35	110	4
MasterFlag1	35	103	5
Zixerqath	35	85	6
Hobbes	35	82	7
Hayati	35	56	8