Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
Nine Men's Morris, which is also known as The Mill or Merrills,
has a long history in Europe and is even mentioned by Shakespeare.
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The number of legal positions in Nine Men's Morris is estimated to be
10
10
, and the total number of possible games is approximately 10
50
.In
October 1993 the game was solved by Ralph Gasser, who compiled a
computer database for the game at the ETH in Zurich. Gasser showed
that the game should end in a draw if both sides play correctly.
TheancientAfricangameofAwariisknowntoexistinsome400
variants, many having their own names. Mancala, Kalah, Wari and Bao
are some of the more popular names and versions. Originally played
on an arrangement of small pits dug in the sand, nowadays Awari is
played on a wooden board on which each player has six pits on his side
of the board, with each pit containing four stones at the start of the
game.
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There is also a pit, called a
house
, at each end of the board,
where the owner of the house keeps the stones he has captured.
26
The
number of possible positions in Awari is approximately 10
12
. In 2002 the
game was solved by Henri Bal and John Romein at the Free University in
Amsterdam. Their database took only 51 hours to compute and proved
that either player can force a draw from the starting position.
Go—The Most Difficult Game of All
A game of Go starts with an empty board. Each player has an effectively
unlimited supply of stones, one player taking the black stones, the other
taking white. The basic object of the game is to use one's stones to form
territories by surrounding vacant areas of the board. It is also possible to
capture the opponent's stones by surrounding them.
Go is widely regarded amongst games experts as the most difficult
classic game of all to learn to play well. Similarly, within the computer
games field, Go is known to be the most difficult game to program to a
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Act 2, Scene 1), “The nine men's morris is filled up with mud.”
25
The number of pits varies from game to game, as does the number of stones in each pit at the
start of the game. The version described here, with six pits on each side and four stones in each pit
at the start, is one of the most popular forms of the game.
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To make a move a player chooses one of his own pits (not an empty one) and removes all
the stones from that pit, “sowing” them counter-clockwise in the remaining pits (and skipping the
original pit if there are more than 11 stones to sow). If the last stone is sown into an enemy pit
that contains two or three stones after sowing, these two or three stones are captured and put in
the moving player's house. In this case, if the second last pit is also an enemy pit that contains two
or three stones, they are captured as well, and this process is repeated clockwise. The player who
captures the most stones, wins the game.
