2004 Challenge Match

In the 2004 Arimaa Computer Championship, the runaway winner was Bomb, programmed by David Fotland. Fotland had a special incentive to pour time into the creation of Bomb that year; Omar Syed had promised to double the Challenge prize to $20,000 if Fotland could win it in the very first year.

On the human side, Frank Heinemann had won the 2004 Arimaa World Championship, but was reluctant to defend the honor of humanity in the Challenge match with so much money on the line. Therefore Syed, the top-rated human player at the time, defended his own prize.

Early versions of Bomb had seemed to play at least as well as any human in mid-2003. However, humans soon discovered the camel hostage strategy, which was so effective against Bomb that Fotland had to retune his bot to prevent it from giving up its camel as a hostage every single game. The version of Bomb that played in the 2004 Challenge was much less aggressive.

There was some suspense as to whether Syed would be able to beat Bomb without recourse to camel hostages, but it soon emerged that the more-defensive Bomb would gradually concede small strategic weaknesses in face of a lone elephant attack, allowing Syed to slowly build up a large material advantage before breaking open the game. Bomb appeared to outplay Syed in some open positions, but Syed's accumulated material always held up.

After sweeping five games, Syed became confident enough to attempt to win the final three games under extra constraints. In the sixth game he won without losing a piece, in the seventh game he won without capturing a piece or losing a piece, and in the eighth game he won with a material handicap of a rabbit.

The final score of 8-0 in favor of Syed was much more lopsided than expected, and belied a few exciting positions in the early games. Fotland opined that he had missed his best chance to win the Challenge, as humans would improve at playing Arimaa more rapidly than he could improve his software.