2010 World Computer Championship Rules

The 2010 Arimaa Computer World Championship

Overview: The 2010 Arimaa Computer World Championship tournament will determine the best software Arimaa player, with the entrants running on hardware provided by Arimaa.com. The winner will receive a prize of $$$ USD. All contestants will also receive $$ USD for each game won. The entry fee is $$ USD. The top two finishers will compete for the right to play in the Arimaa Challenge match.

Schedule:

• Qualification begins: 12AM GMT Friday Jan 1, 2010
• Qualification ends: 12AM GMT Monday Feb 1, 2010
• Linux account provided by: 6PM EST Sunday Feb 7, 2010
• The registration fee must be paid before an account will be provided.
• Bots must be uploaded by: 6PM EST Monday Feb 22, 2010
• Tournament begins: Mar 1, 2010
• Tournament ends: Mar 14, 2010

Qualification: Participation is limited to eight bots, one per developer or development team. Bots qualify by winning games during January against a stable of benchmark bots available on arimaa.com. Developers are encouraged to practice against the benchmark bots in 2009. Games against these bots in 2010, whether rated or unrated, will be considered official qualifying games.

The benchmark bots for 2010 will be

• ArimaaScoreP1
• Loc2007P1
• Arimaazilla
• Aamira2006P2
• Bomb2005Fast
• OpFor2009Fast
• Gnobot2009Blitz
• Clueless2009Blitz

A bot attempting to qualify for the tournament may play each benchmark bot up to twenty times; additional games will be ignored. Each benchmark bot must be played with alternating colors. A qualifying bot scores one point for each win in its longest winning streak against a benchmark bot, up to a maximum of four points per benchmark bot. The best possible qualifying score is 32 points, which represents attaining a four-game winning streak against each benchmark bot.

For bots which tie on qualifying score, the first tiebreaker is score minus the number of qualifying games played. Thus the best possible tiebreak score is zero, which represents winning all qualifying games and not playing any excess games. The worst possible tiebreak score is -160, which represents playing the maximum number of games and winning none. The second tiebreak is earliest date of completion, i.e. the bot whose last qualifying game was played first.

Developers are responsible for having a stable Internet connection to Arimaa.com during qualification. Games decided by network failures or other technical issues will count in the qualification standings.

During qualification, developers must run their programs on standard off-the-shelf hardware and OS similar to that which is used in the challenge match. Developers which qualify by means of using much faster hardware or other assistance that makes their bot play far better in qualifying than in the championship will forfeit their prize money and be disqualified from future Arimaa Computer World Championship events.

All developers of qualified bots will be given an account on a Linux system and must port their bot to this account and make sure it can play in the Arimaa gameroom. If bots that have qualified are not uploaded by the deadline, they will be disqualified, and bots with lower qualifying scores will be invited to participate instead.

Once the programs have been submitted for the tournament, they may not be modified manually, but can modify themselves if it is an automated process. The programs will be played against each other under the control of the tournament coordinator. The games will be played in the Arimaa gameroom. Each program will run on its own computer and both computers will have the same hardware and OS configuration.

Tournament format: Floating Triple Elimination

The tournament coordinator runs a program which is used to pair the players, assign a bye in rounds with odd number of players and to select the color of each player. The pairing algorithm attempts to best meet the following constraints:

1. Programs are initially ranked based on qualifying score.
2. Everyone plays until they have lost three times. At the end of each round, any player who has lost for the third time is eliminated.
3. If an odd number of players remain, the bye must go to some player among the players with the fewest byes so far.
4. Minimize the number of pairings occuring for the Nth time. ...
5. Minimize the number of pairings occuring for the fourth time.
6. Minimize the number of pairings occuring for the third time.
7. Minimize the number of pairings occuring for the second time.
8. Give the bye to the player with the fewest losses.
9. Give the bye to the player with the highest qualifying score.
10. Pair players with a similar number of losses against each other.
11. Maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among remaining players.
12. Within each pairing, the player who has played gold a fewer number of times so far against this opponent will play gold for that game. If this is a tie, then the player who has played gold a fewer percentage of times so far in the tournament will play gold for that game, with ties broken randomly.
13. All games are played according to the Arimaa Match Rules.

This tournament format is designed only to clearly recognize a first place winner. Recognition of second and third place will be done based on number of games won. Highest qualifying score will be used to break ties for third place. In case of ties for second place addition games will be played to break the tie. A two-way tie for second will be broken by a one-game playoff. A three-way tie for second will be broken by first pairing the two players eliminated in the second-to-last round and the winner playing the last eliminated player. In these tie breaker games the colors are assigned so that a player plays the color they have played a fewer number of times. If this is equal then the player with the lower rating selects the color. If this is equal the player who was eliminated in the second-to-last round selects the color.

Time controls: All games will be played with a time control of: 2m/2m/100/10m/8h.

Breaking draws: Draws are not allowed and will be broken according to the Arimaa Match Rules.

Hardware and OS. The hardware and OS that will be used in the championship tournament and challenge match will be specified shortly before the tournament begins. The hardware will typically be a standard general purpose computer that can be purchased within $1000 USD (not including tax, shipping and handling :-). The OS used for the Arimaa challenge will be the most current version of the Linux OS.

Technical failures on Arimaa.com during tournament games will be remediated as follows:

1. Once the first game of a round has started, the results of previous rounds can't be altered, no matter what issue is discovered.
2. If it is determined during a game that either bot has suffered a disadvantage, the game will be immediately halted, made unrated, and resumed from the point at which the disadvantage first occurred. The game must be halted regardless of whether the disadvantaged player is winning or losing.
3. If it is determined after a game is over, but before the next round has begun, that either bot has suffered a disadvantage, the game result will be invalidated, the game will be made unrated, and the game will be replayed from the point at which the disadvantage first occurred. The game must be replayed whether the disadvantaged player won or lost.
4. Disadvantages that warrant a game being halted and/or replayed include, but are not limited to
   1. Extraneous processes running on either tournament server
   2. The game server failing to receive a move sent by a tournament server
   3. A tournament server failing to receive a move sent by the game server
   4. A tournament server stopping and restarting a bot mid-move
   5. A bot being misconfigured by the tournament coordinator
5. The tournament director decides whether technical failures not on this list warrant halting and/or replaying games.
6. When restarting games from a specific position, the tournament coordinator will attempt to restore the clock state (reserve times) as closely as possible to the state at the time the issue occurred.

Program Requirements All programs submitted for the tournament must:

• be statically compiled and linked executables that can run on the provided Linux system. (Be sure to use the -static option of the linker if your program is compiled.)
• provide a README.bot file which explains the options that are available for the program and how they are to be entered.
• provide an option to specify a hardware independent play strength such as the number of nodes to evaluate before stopping, or the number of plys to search, etc. When this option is used the program should not look at the time control. This option will not be used in the championship or challenge match, but will be used after these events when the program is made available for others to play against in the Arimaa gameroom. The purpose of this is so that the program will play the same strength independent of the hardware or system load.
• use the Arimaa bot interface.

Publication: The intent of the Arimaa computer championship and challenge match is to help advance research in areas of AI. Thus, it is recommended that the participants (especially those with programs in the championship tournament) submit an article to the ICGA technical journal describing their research and results. Also the programs submitted for the championship tournament will be made available for others to play against in the public Arimaa gameroom after the challenge match is over. Thus the programs and players participating in the following years can be improved against the best programs of the previous years. Participants who submit programs that are limited after some time, some games or limited in any manner will not be allowed to participate in following years and must return any prize awarded. Organizations or individuals who are not comfortable with these conditions should not participate.

Notes:

• The tournament coordinator will carry out the tournament in compliance with the stated rules and does not make any decisions that will effect the course of the tournament. A player may serve as the coordinator.
• The tournament director will serve as the arbitrator in case of disputes. Should a dispute arise about the outcome of a game, the director will review the game and decide if the game should be replayed.
• The director will also make the final decision on matters of pairing and color assignment. However, the pairings and color assignments are done as much as possible using a program and the need for intervention should be rare.
• All decisions made by the director shall be considered final and binding by all parties.
• Omar and Aamir Syed reserve the rights to modify the championship tournament details in the future to resolve any logistical problems that may arise.