Overview: The 2006 Arimaa Computer World Championship tournament will determine the best computer Arimaa player. The winner will be declared the 2006 Arimaa Computer World Champion and receive a prize of $500 USD. The winner will also have the right to play in the Arimaa Challenge match. A prize of $200 USD will be awarded to second place. The tournament will begin on January 18th and finish before the end of January. Only the eight top rated programs will be selected to play in the tournament.Selection: The selection process is designed to make it easy for anyone to participate as long as they have a reliable Internet connection. The participants will use the bot interface to have their program login to the Arimaa gameroom and play rated qualifying games against other players (programs and humans) to establish the rating of their program. The participants should run their programs on standard off-the-shelf hardware. The top eight highest rated programs will be chosen for the tournament such that each program is from a different participant. During the month of November and December the programs that wish to qualify must be made available in the Arimaa gameroom for anyone to play against at the time control of 2/2/100/10/8 for at least 40 days. The programs may of course play as much as possible throughout the year to establish their ratings. The eight programs that have the highest rating at the end of December will be selected to play in the tournament. In case two programs have the same rating the one that has played more rated games at this time control will be selected. It is required that the programs play to their full potential within the limits of this time control. Thus, when playing these qualifying games the program should be allowed to make full use of the time as it would in a real tournament game. Games played at this time control but with the program intentionally set to not make full use of the time will not count towards the qualifying games.
Setup: The eight top rated programs will be submitted for the tournament games. Participants in the tournament will be provided with accounts on a Linux computers to port and setup their programs before the tournament games begin. Once the programs have been submitted for the tournament, they may not be modified manually, but can modify themselves if it is an automated process. The programs will be played against each other under the control of the tournament director. The games will be played in the Arimaa gameroom. Each program will run on it's own computer and both computers will have the same hardware and OS configuration.
Tournament format: Floating Triple Elimination
- Everyone plays until they have lost three times. At the end of each round, any player who has lost for the third time is eliminated.
- At the beginning of each round, if an odd number of players remain, a bye must be assigned. The bye goes to the player who has recieved the fewest byes so far, with ties broken in favor of fewest losses so far, and further ties broken in favor of highest pre-tournament rating.
- The players who don't get a bye are paired iteratively as follows: Select the unpaired player with the fewest losses (ties broken by highest pretournament rating), and pair him with the player in the field he has played the least number of times, with ties broken in favor of having fewest losses, and further ties broken in favor of lower pre-tournament rating.
- Within each pairing, whoever has played Gold a lesser percentage of times so far in the tournament should get to play Gold for that game, with ties broken randomly.
- All games are played according to the Arimaa Match Rules.
Time controls: All games will be played with a time control of: 2m/2m/100/10m/8h.
Breaking draws: Draws are not allowed and will be broken according to the Arimaa Match Rules.
Hardware and OS. The hardware and OS that will be used in the championship tournament and challenge match will be specified shortly before the tournament begins. The hardware will typically be a standard general purpose computer that can be purchased within $1000 USD (not including tax, shipping and handling :-). The OS used for the Arimaa challenge will be the most current version of the Linux OS.
Schedule The qualifying games must be played during November and December. The program ratings as of midnight January 1st GMT will be used to select the eight best programs for the tournament. The selected programs must be submitted by midnight January 16th GMT into a specified account. The tournament will being on January 18th and finish before the end of January.
Program Requirements All programs submitted for the tournament must:
- use the Arimaa bot interface.
- be statically compiled and linked executables that can run on the provided Linux system.
Be sure to use the -static option of the linker.- log all initial conditions at the start of the game and at the start of each move (such as the seed used for the random number generator) so that given these initial conditions the program can be made to play the same way again.
- provide an option to give the program it's own initial conditions log file as input so that the values in that file can override the values it would use otherwise in order to repeat a game.
- provide an option to specify a hardware independent play strength such as the number of nodes to evaluate before stopping, or the number of plys to search, etc. When this option is used the program should not look at the time control. This option will not be used in the championship or challenge match, but will be used after these events when the program is made available for others to play against in the Arimaa gameroom. The purpose of this is so that the program will play the same strength independent of the hardware or system load.
- provide a README file which explains the options that are available for the program and how they are to be entered.
Publication: The intent of the Arimaa computer championship and challenge match is to help advance research in areas of AI. Thus, it is recommended that the participants (especially those with programs in the championship tournament) will submit articles to the ICGA technical journal describing their research and results. Also the programs submitted for the championship tournament will be made available for others to play against in the public Arimaa gameroom after the challenge match is over. Thus the programs and players participating in the following year can be improved against the best programs of the previous year. Participants who submit programs that are limited after some time, some games or limited in any manner will not be allowed to participate in following years and must return any prize awarded. Organizations or individuals who are not comfortable with these conditions should not participate.
Notes: The director will serve as the arbitrator in case of disputes. Should a dispute arise about the outcome of a game, the director will review the game and decide if the game should be replayed. The director will also make the final decision on matters of pairing and color assignment. All decisions made by the director shall be considered final and binding by all parties. Omar and Aamir Syed reserve the rights to modify the championship tournament details in the future to resolve any logistical problems that may arise.
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