Report on the 11th Advances in Computer Games Conference

Ling Zhao

University of Alberta

October 18, 2005

Conference

Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

September 6-September 8 20 Technical papers, 3 invited talks.

UofA Presence

4 technical papers (Nathan, Markian, Niu, Ling)

1 invited talk (Tony Marsland) 1 gold medal (Mike Smith, in game of

pool). Familiar faces (Kishi, Hashimoto)

Invited talks

Trials and Tribulations of a programmer, by Tony Marsland

Towards dynamics of intelligence in the field of games, by Hiroyuki Iida

Hardware-related research at Microsoft Research Asia, by Feng-hsiung Hsu.

Trials and Tribulations of a programmer Research material preservation. Anecdotes in 25 years of research on

computer chess (1970-1995). Other research advice.

Towards dynamics of intelligence in the field of games Game refinement theory Two measures (complexity and game-

refinement) Formulas: sqrt(B)/D, … To create a well-refined game is great, and

to design a fair situation for man-machine match is a great challenge!

Hardware-related research at Microsoft Research Asia PCI FPGA-based hardware: 13 million

gates Completely wireless environments No Deep Blue topics!

Deep Green Vs. Michael Greenspan Deep Green: Pool-playing robot. Involving physics, mechanics, electronic

engineering, image processing and artificial intelligence.

Parametrization of ball motions. Analytical and accurate solution for both

time and space parameters. Suitable for game tree search and outcome

prediction.

Innovative Opening-book Handling by Ulf Lorenz How to efficiently utilize databases of

grandmaster games? Opening book contains too much rubbish. Two heuristics: risk and goodness. Risk: move frequency table for each

position. Goodness: benefit history of a move.

Cognitive Science in Shogi byTakeshi Ito Using verbal protocol data and eye movement

data. Space chunking: Dividing the whole position into

small meaningful parts. Results:

1. Shogi experts can memorize position patterns

and move sequences.

2. Shogi experts use both spatial chunks and

temporal chunk (move sequences).

10th Computer Olympiad

No chess tournament. 14 participants in Chinese chess. Booming

interest from Mainland China. Chinese chess programs will soon challenge

the best human players.