The Arimaa Challenge

The Arimaa Challenge was won on April 18, 2015 and is no longer available. This page exists for historical purpose. Currently the best Arimaa players are humans. But how long will it stay that way. Each year advances in computer hardware are shortening the gap between the computational power of the brain and that of computers. However we are confident that Arimaa will continue to be the domain of humans for years to come. When will computers defeat the best human Arimaa players In fact we are offering a prize of at least $10,000 USD (current prize may be more) until 2020 to the first person, company or organization who develops a program that can defeat three selected human players in an official Arimaa match. The match will consist of at least 3 games against each of the three players. The program must be able to run on a general-purpose, off-the-shelf computer and not require any specialized hardware. We invite participants from Universities, Corporations and also individuals around the world to see if they can develop the best Arimaa playing program. Each January a tournament will be held to determine the best Arimaa playing program. The winner of that tournament will receive a prize and a chance to try for the $10,000 grand challenge of defeating human players. We especially would like to encourage teams from Universities around the world to participate. The contest will be fun and interesting. Arimaa demonstrates that when it comes to serious game playing, humans still dominate. By offering this challenge we hope to increase the awareness that the difficult problem of teaching computers to play strategy games has not yet been tackled. There is much work that needs to be done in understanding how humans play strategy games and producing similar capability in software. We hope this challenge will spur some new and radically different ways of replicating this astonishing human capability in software. The breakthroughs that will come from such research can have significant applications in a wide variety of fields. "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts."                                 -- Bill Gates If you are planning to take part in this challenge, or would like to help increase the challenge prize, please contact us.	2015 Arimaa Challenge Computer AI wins 7-2 2014 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 7-2 2013 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 8-1 2012 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 6-3 2011 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 8-1 2010 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 6-3 2009 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 7-2 2008 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 9-0 2007 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 8-1 2006 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 8-1 2005 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 7-1 Sponsored by 2004 Arimaa Challenge Humans win 8-0 Sponsored by
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