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Jonathan Schaeffer
Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer (born 1957) is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence. He led the team that wrote Chinook, the world's strongest American checkers player, after some relatively good results in writing computer chess programs. He is involved in the University of Alberta GAMES group developing computer poker systems. Schaeffer is also a member of the research group that created Polaris, a program designed to play the Texas Hold'em variant of poker. He is a Founder of Onlea, which produces online learning experiences. Early life Born in Toronto, Ontario, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 from the University of Toronto. He received a Master of Mathematics degree in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of Waterloo. Schaeffer reached national master strength in chess while in his early 20s, but has played little competitive chess since that time. Draughts: C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Poker Players
A computer poker player is a computer program designed to play the game of poker against human opponents or other computer opponents. It is commonly referred to as pokerbot or just simply bot. On the Internet These bots or computer programs are used often in online poker situations as either legitimate opponents for humans players or a form of cheating. Whether or not the use of bot constitutes cheating is typically defined by the poker room that hosts the actual poker games. Most (if not all) cardrooms forbid the use of bots although the level of enforcement from site operators varies considerably. Player bots The subject of player bots and computer assistance, while playing online poker, is very controversial. Player opinion is quite varied when it comes to deciding which types of computer software fall into the category unfair advantage. One of the primary factors in defining a bot is whether or not the computer program can interface with the poker client (in other words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nash Equilibrium
In game theory, the Nash equilibrium, named after the mathematician John Nash, is the most common way to define the solution of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players. In a Nash equilibrium, each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no one has anything to gain by changing only one's own strategy. The principle of Nash equilibrium dates back to the time of Cournot, who in 1838 applied it to competing firms choosing outputs. If each player has chosen a strategy an action plan based on what has happened so far in the game and no one can increase one's own expected payoff by changing one's strategy while the other players keep their's unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices constitutes a Nash equilibrium. If two players Alice and Bob choose strategies A and B, (A, B) is a Nash equilibrium if Alice has no other strategy available that does better than A at maximizing her payoff in response to Bob choosing B, and Bob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monte Carlo Simulation
Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be deterministic in principle. They are often used in physical and mathematical problems and are most useful when it is difficult or impossible to use other approaches. Monte Carlo methods are mainly used in three problem classes: optimization, numerical integration, and generating draws from a probability distribution. In physics-related problems, Monte Carlo methods are useful for simulating systems with many coupled degrees of freedom, such as fluids, disordered materials, strongly coupled solids, and cellular structures (see cellular Potts model, interacting particle systems, McKean–Vlasov processes, kinetic models of gases). Other examples include modeling phenomena with significant uncertainty in inputs such as the calculation of risk in b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas Hold 'em
Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five Community card poker, community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards ("the flop"), later an additional single card ("the turn" or "fourth street"), and a final card ("the river" or "fifth street"). Each player seeks the best List of poker hands, five card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards; the five community cards and their two hole cards. Players have Betting in poker, betting options to check, call, raise, or fold. Rounds of betting take place before the flop is dealt and after each subsequent deal. The player who has the best hand and has not folded by the end of all betting rounds wins all of the money bet for the hand, known as the pot. In certain situations, a "split-pot" or "tie" can occur when tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solved Game
A solved game is a game whose outcome (win, lose or draw) can be correctly predicted from any position, assuming that both players play perfectly. This concept is usually applied to abstract strategy games, and especially to games with full information and no element of chance; solving such a game may use combinatorial game theory and/or computer assistance. Overview A two-player game can be solved on several levels: ;Ultra-weak : Prove whether the first player will win, lose or draw from the initial position, given perfect play on both sides. This can be a non-constructive proof (possibly involving a strategy-stealing argument) that need not actually determine any moves of the perfect play. ;Weak : Provide an algorithm that secures a win for one player, or a draw for either, against any possible moves by the opponent, from the beginning of the game. ;Strong : Provide an algorithm that can produce perfect moves from any position, even if mistakes have already been made on one or b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elo Rating System
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved chess-rating system over the previously used Harkness system, but is also used as a rating system in association football, American football, baseball, basketball, pool, table tennis, and various board games and esports. The difference in the ratings between two players serves as a predictor of the outcome of a match. Two players with equal ratings who play against each other are expected to score an equal number of wins. A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%. A player's Elo rating is represented by a number which may change depending on the outcome of rated games played. After every game, the winni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solve Game
A solved game is a game whose outcome (win, lose or draw) can be correctly predicted from any position, assuming that both players play perfectly. This concept is usually applied to abstract strategy games, and especially to games with full information and no element of chance; solving such a game may use combinatorial game theory and/or computer assistance. Overview A two-player game can be solved on several levels: ;Ultra-weak : Prove whether the first player will win, lose or draw from the initial position, given perfect play on both sides. This can be a non-constructive proof (possibly involving a strategy-stealing argument) that need not actually determine any moves of the perfect play. ;Weak : Provide an algorithm that secures a win for one player, or a draw for either, against any possible moves by the opponent, from the beginning of the game. ;Strong : Provide an algorithm that can produce perfect moves from any position, even if mistakes have already been made on one or b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Lafferty
Don Lafferty (1933–1998) was a Grandmaster checkers (British English: draughts) player. In 1982 he defeated Derek Oldbury for the World GAYP (Go as you please) championship with a score of 1-0-23. He was challenged for the championship in 1984 by Paul Davis, winning easily 5-0-15. In 1986 he defended his title again by drawing James Morrison with a score of 0-0-24 and in 1989 he defeated Elbert Lowder 4-3-16. He contested for the 3-move restriction title twice in his career but never succeeded. In 1987 he failed to defeat Marion Tinsley, losing by a score of 2-0-36. In 1996 he tried again, this time against Ron King, but he only managed a 5-5-30 draw. In his matches with Chinook he had 8 wins, 7 losses and 109 draws. Personal life He received his degree from Western Kentucky University Western Kentucky University is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was founded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1906, though its roots reach back a quarter-century e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Checker Federation
English draughts (British English) or checkers (American English), also called straight checkers or simply draughts, is a form of the strategy board game checkers (or draughts). It is played on an 8×8 checkerboard with 12 pieces per side. The pieces move and capture diagonally forward, until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are crowned and can thereafter move and capture both backward and forward. As in all forms of draughts, English draughts is played by two opponents, alternating turns on opposite sides of the board. The pieces are traditionally black, red, or white. Enemy pieces are captured by jumping over them. The 8×8 variant of draughts was weakly solved in 2007 by a team of Canadian computer scientists led by Jonathan Schaeffer. From the standard starting position, both players can guarantee a draw with perfect play. Pieces Though pieces are traditionally made of wood, now many are made of plastic, though other materials may be used. Pieces are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marion Tinsley
Marion Franklin Tinsley (February 3, 1927 – April 3, 1995) was an American mathematician and checkers player. He is considered to be the greatest checkers player who ever lived. Tinsley was world champion 1955–1958 and 1975–1991 and never lost a world championship match, and lost only seven games (two of them to the Chinook computer program, one of them drunk, one of them in a simultaneous exhibition) from 1950 until his death in 1995. He withdrew from championship play during the years 1958–1975, relinquishing the title during that time. Derek Oldbury, sometimes considered the second-best player of all time, thought that Tinsley was "to checkers what Leonardo da Vinci was to science, what Michelangelo was to art and what Beethoven was to music." Early life and education Tinsley was born in Ironton, Ohio, and was the son of a school teacher and a farmer who became a sheriff. He had a sister and "felt unloved" by his parents. To gain the affection of his parents, he compe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Program
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. ( Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter. If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction. If the source code is requested for execution, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
