Student of Games: The algorithm that wins at chess and poker
Student of Games: The algorithm that wins at chess and poker
Student of Games: The algorithm that wins at chess and poker
By Natalia Ponjoan
November 18, 2023
Summary
A new algorithm called Student of Games is capable of winning different board games, such as chess, Go, Texas Hold'em poker and Scotland Yard.
Until now, the AlphaZero algorithm could only solve games with perfect information - such as chess and Go - in which all players have access to the same information.
The goal of Student of Games is to reduce the 800 chips as much as possible.
For this reason, it's not as strong as the Student of Games algorithm: "The literature has historically shown that algorithms that search among possible actions are usually better at games than algorithms that don't use search but they're also slower and more expensive to train," Timbers explains.
"It's very possible that cheating occurs on [gambling] websites and in similar games. Many competitive video games will try to be inflexible with the software allowed on each player's computers, to ensure that , something that Riot Games already does with Valorant ," says Diego Rodríguez-Ponga Albalá, the founder and director of Pontica Digital Solutions.
Gema Ruiz, head of Innovation at Softtek EMEA, points out other limitations to the algorithm, such as the use of betting abstractions in poker and "Computational costs." The use of abstractions consists of grouping similar plays that are treated in the same way, so as to reduce the complexity of the game.
In the future, Ruiz emphasizes, the study suggests that the algorithm could employ "a broader policy that can handle a variety of actions in game situations, with a large number of possible decisions." As the enumeration of all possible moves by the algorithm involves a high cost, the researchers propose a "Generative model." This means that the algorithm would generate a sample of all possible strategies and operate on the subset of the selected samples, rather than listing every single possible option.
Reference
Ponjoan, N. (2023, November 18). Student of Games: The algorithm that wins at chess and poker. EL PAÍS English. https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-11-19/student-of-games-the-algorithm-that-wins-at-chess-and-poker.html