Hi! I'm wondering if there is a good LOA playing computer programm or are we like in TwixT safe and know we're playing against humans? It shouldn't be that hard to write an AI because the number of moves is very small… but it's still difficult to find some good parameters and balance them right. So I think there is a probability that a good AI exists, but at the moment (in first league) I'm pretty sure nobody is cheating, although I got no prove.

Btw: There was a game like LOA that was used (or still is used, i don't know) for programming battles, the only difference is that the board has about 4 or 8 numbers on it and you get points by landing on the field and also points for ending the game, but the one who makes a single chain doesn't have to be the winner, if he made not many points before.

Mark Winands's MIA is probably the strongest “playing entity” in the world. It had won the latest Computer LOA Championship in 2006. See

http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/m.winands/loa/

Also Kevin Gong who is one of the top players here wrote a program called Unite some years ago.

I don't know if you have tested Guilhare's bots at www.loagame.com

For me they play pretty strong.

Adam

Thank you. I visited the site and it is really nice done, I would say “open source spirit”. And for everyone who's interested if the programm is better than humans I've got a citation from the readme: “GameMaster […] includes the MIA 4 series which won the LOA tournament at the 8th, 9th and 11 Computer Olympiad and defeated the human World-Champion at an exhibition event at ICEC 2004. It is believed to be the strongest LOA playing entity of the world.”

So I would say yes, “unfortunately” there is a programm better than humans…