Subject: Computer Abalone

From: [email-masked] (Michael P. Frank)
Date: Sat, 16 May 92 10:49:32 EDT

Piaw> I've been playing abalone lately, and I was wondering if there's a
Piaw> computer version of this game.

Hi Piaw.  Some of us at Tech Square wrote an Abalone-playing program
last January, in C++ on the sparcs.  It plays pretty well, but if you
know how it works you can fool it.  It actually has two different
search algorithms, a plain alpha-beta, and a "conspiracy theory"
player (which Carl wrote).  You might have heard that Dave McAllester
invented conspiracy theory as a more principled and more general
alternative to singular extension sorts of things.

You can play the two algorithms against each other or play against one
of them (or have 2 people play).  Unfortunately the algorithms both
use the same stupid static-board evaluator, which could use some
improvement.

The user-interface sucks. The board uses "ASCII-graphics" and you have
to type in 5 numbers describing your move.

There's also an "official" commercial Abalone player coming out for
PC-compatibles someday, which probably plays better than ours
(certainly I would guess they have a better board evaluator).  I don't
think it's out yet.

-Mike