Comment Re:what is Arimaa? (Score 2) 58
Arimaa is a two-player strategy board game that was designed to be playable with a standard chess set and difficult for computers while still being easy to learn and fun to play for humans. Every year since 2004, the Arimaa community has held three tournaments: a World Championship (humans only), a Computer Championship (computers only), and the Arimaa Challenge (human vs. computer).
seriously, slashdice, some reference would be nice sometimes.
Given the youth of the game I suspect there is much less analysis and history in
support of the game. The difficulty that computers faces is the same one that players face and
while depth search for a computer is difficult it is more difficult for the human player.
The game was invented in about 2002... and chess has a history that spans 1500 years
and Go 2500 to 4000 years.
While difficult to test I suspect that if we restricted chess players to the same age
and tenure profile of Arimaa players a machine would romp over the novice chess
players (max experience 13 years, average perhaps 7).
Now that there are champion machines the game may well move into the
class of games only played by machines. Or, Programmers and hardware mfg
consortiums could compete little different than the America's Cup.
The game might prove the ideal context to form a man+machine or team+machine contest
where the men shape strategy and the machine carries the game to conclusion
with nudges from the man-power.
Now should I bother to learn the game at all?