From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-04-11T22:29:17+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Fico 0.1.0

On Apr 10, 2005, at 8:08 PM, Glenn Parker wrote:

> James Edward Gray II wrote:
>> I was not familiar with Havannah, until I saw these posts, but I'm 
>> all for the idea.  If either of you wish to write it up and send it 
>> in we can do it.
>
> Uh, from what I can see, Havannah is definitely a non-trivial game, on 
> the same level as Go or Chess.  You'll need a lot more than 48 hours 
> to code up a decent player that doesn't run forever before spitting 
> out a move.

I think a minimax search, on a board that size is definitely not going 
anywhere fast (especially in Ruby).  It does strike me that a game like 
that has certain patterns though, which a clever programmer might be 
able to exploit.

I agree that we definitely wouldn't be creating tournament champions, 
but I'm guessing we could do a touch better than a random player.

Or, we could try building an AI for a simpler game, since I believe 
that was the point of the suggested exercise.

James Edward Gray II