Stephen Tavener has made a program called AiAi that plays some hundred abstract games, including the top-ten combinatorial ones at BGG from 2012 onwards.

It's a great tool to learn new games and the Ai opponent covers the whole range of levels, depending on the type of game (in the first place) and the setting of strength and thinking time.

A really important feature is that it allows human vs human play without the use of a browser. As I write I write, there 22 registered users and I expect that number to grow because hey, it's a great program and it's free!

Yeah, I love AI AI!  Could you please post the url.  (My guess is that you did, but it can't be seen because of the awkward picture placement).

You can even play both variants of NECNON from Richard Moxham with Aiai, see this post https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=3186 where the address is available:

http://mrraow.com/index.php/aiai-home

Great program, I enjoyed using it a lot.

Now for a bit of self promotion, the program currently features seven of my games:

• Dameo
• Emergo
• Symple
• Sygo
• Havannah
• Starweb
• Storisende

Storisende is something not so usual.

Christian, how strong is the Havannah player?

Just to make it clear, Ai Ai allows you to play turn-based games against other players… as well as playing against an AI.

There are dozens and dozens of great games on there. Besides Christian's creations, there's Blooms, Tak, Bug, Tintas, etc.

Hi Richard, long time no see :)

Actually I don't know how strong the Havannah player is, but the program is generic and it's a connection game, and traditionally that combination is seldom very strong.

Rex, you can also play live with AiAi, just stay both at the keyboard. :)

This is really wonderful!

One thing I can't figure out is how to review the moves of a completed game. Even though the “History” tab lists all the moves, there doesn't seem to be any way to actually play them out on the board again other than writing them down and redoing it manually. Am I missing something obvious or is this just a missing feature?

I too miss the option to look at a replay. For now I just go back and forth through a game.

Anybody else on Windows struggling with “JNI” errors / Java exception when running AiAi?  I muddled through the installation process for OpenJDK to try and use this, sigh…