Evaluation function based monte-carlo LOA

  • Authors:

  • Mark H. M. Winands;Yngvi Björnsson

  • Affiliations:

  • Games and AI Group, Department of Knowledge Engineering, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands;School of Computer Science, Reykjavík University, Reykjavík, Iceland

  • Venue:
  • ACG'09 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Advances in Computer Games
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Recently, Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has advanced the field of computer Go substantially. Also in the game of Lines of Action (LOA), which has been dominated so far by αβ, MCTS is making an inroad. In this paper we investigate how to use a positional evaluation function in a Monte-Carlo simulation-based LOA program (MC-LOA). Four different simulation strategies are designed, called Evaluation Cut-Off, Corrective, Greedy, and Mixed. They use an evaluation function in several ways. Experimental results reveal that the Mixed strategy is the best among them. This strategy draws the moves randomly based on their transition probabilities in the first part of a simulation, but selects them based on their evaluation score in the second part of a simulation. Using this simulation strategy the MC-LOA program plays at the same level as the αβ program MIA, the best LOA-playing entity in the world.