PROGRAMME

COMPUTER GAMES WORKSHOP 2007

June 15-17, 2007

Venue:

The Turing Hall,

Science Park Amsterdam, Kruislaan 413,

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Organised by

IBM

SARA Computing and Networking Services

NCF (Foundation of National Computing Facilities)

International Computer Games Association (ICGA)

Maastricht ICT Competence Centre - Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology (MICC-IKAT)

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Call for Papers

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ORGANISATION

Programme Chairs

Professor H.J. van den Herik

Dr. N.S. Hekster (IBM)

Dr. A. Osseyran (SARA)

Dr. P.J.C. Aerts (NCF)

Organising Committee

J.W. Hellemons (chair)

A. Berg

T. van den Bosch

M. den Hartog

H.J. van den Herik

M. Schadd

J. Uiterwijk

M. Winands

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Sponsors

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Proceedings

H.Jaap van den Herik Mark Winands

Jos Uiterwijk Maarten Schadd

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Yngvi Björnsson Bruno Bouzy Michael Buro Tristan Cazenave Guillaume Chaslot Ken Chen Paolo Ciancarini Rémi Coulom Jeroen Donkers Markus Enzenberger Aviezri Fraenkel Michael Greenspan Reijer Grimbergen Ryan Hayward Shun-Chin Hsu Tsan-sheng Hsu Hiroyuki Iida Graham Kendall Akihiro Kishimoto Hans Kuijf Ulf Lorenz Shaul Markovitch Alberto Martelli Martin Müller Jacques Pitrat Christian Posthoff Matthias Rauterberg Jahn-Takeshi Saito Maarten Schadd Jonathan Schaeffer Pieter Spronck Nathan Sturtevant Jos Uiterwijk Tobias Walsh Jan Willemson Mark Winands I-Chen Wu Shi-Jim Yen

University of Reykjavik .University of René Descartes, France University of Alberta, Canada University of Paris 8, France Maastricht University, The Netherlands University of North Carolina, USA University of Bologna, Italy Université Charles de Gaulle, Lille Maastricht University, The Netherlands University of Alberta Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel Queen’s University, Canada Yamagata University, Japan University of Alberta, Canada Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan Academia Sinica, Taiwan JAIST, Japan University of Nottingham, England Future University-Hakodate, Japan JACK Software, the Netherlands University of Paderborn, Germany Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel University of Alberta, Canada University of Alberta, Canada Université Pierre et Marie Curie University of The West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands Maastricht University, The Netherlands Maastricht University, The Netherlands University of Alberta, Canada Maastricht University, The Netherlands University of Alberta, Canada Maastricht University, The Netherlands University of New South Wales, Australia University of Tartu, Estonia Maastricht University The Netherlands National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan

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List of Sponsors

IBM

NCF

Sara

ChessBase

SIKS

BNVKI

OnDemand Rentals

NWO Exacte Wetenschappen

Maastricht ICT Competence Centre

Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology

Maastricht University

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welcome

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the Computer Games Workshop 2007 to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in conjunction with the 12^th Computer Olympiad and the 15^th World Computer Chess Championship. The workshop commences on June 15 and will take place on three consecutive days.

The workshop aims at providing an international forum for computer-games researchers presenting new results on ongoing work.

The call for papers invited contributors to submit papers on all aspects of research related to computers and games. Relevant topics included, but were not limited to:

(1) the current state of game-playing programs,

(2) new theoretical developments in game-related research,

(3) general scientific contributions produced by the study of games,

(4) social aspects of computer games,

(5) cognitive research of how humans play games, and

(6) issues related to networked games.

In response to the call for papers, 24 papers were submitted. The submissions came from 11 countries including Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan and United States.

All papers were refereed. Out of the 24 submissions, a total of 22 papers was accepted for presentation at the workshop.

The CGW2007 proceedings will be published by MICC-IKAT as part of their technical report series.

We thank the Programme Committee members and the referees for their invaluable assistance that helped to make this workshop a success.

We would also like to thank CWI for hosting the workshop in its beautiful building.

We look forward to see the speakers and the other participants in Amsterdam and wish them an inspiring workshop with a fruitful exchange of many new ideas which may stimulate future scientific research.

Dr. P.C.J. Aerts

Dr. N.S. Hekster

Dr. A. Osseyran

Professor H.J. van den Herik

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outline of the PROGRAMME

June 15, 2007 (Friday)

08.30 – 08.50 Reception and Registration

08.50 – 09.05 SARA and Science by Dr. Anwar Osseyran

09.05 – 09.10 Announcements by H.J. van den Herik

09.10 – 09.40 Invited talk by a representative of IBM

09.40 – 09.50 break

09.50 – 12.10 Paper Presentation (I)

Session Chair Jaap van den Herik

09.50 – 10.10 How Trustworthy is Crafty’s Analysis of Chess Champions?

by Matej Guid, Artiz Pérez, and Ivan Bratko

10.10 – 10.30 Context Killer Heuristic and its Application to Computer Shogi

by Junichi Hashimoto, Tsuyoshi Hashimoto, and Hiroyuki Iida

10.30 – 10.50 On the Parallelization of UCT

by Tristan Cazenave and Nicolas Jouandeau

10.50 – 11.10 Monte-Carlo Go with Knowledge Guided Simulations

by Keh-Hsun Chen and Peigang Zhang

11.10 – 11.30 break

11.30 – 11.50 Predicting Success in an Imperfect-Information Game

by Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, Jaap van den Herik, and Philip Kerbusch

11.50 – 12.10 Inducing and Measuring Emotion through a Multiplayer First-person Shooter Computer Game

by Paul Merkx, Khiet Truong, and Mark Neerincx

June 16, 2006 (Saturday)

08.30 – 11.50 Paper Presentation (II)

Session Chair Jos Uiterwijk

08.30 – 08.50 Factors Affecting Diminishing Returns for Searching Deeper

by Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko

08.50 – 09.10 Moving in the Dark: Progress Through Uncertainty in Kriegspiel

by Andrea Bolognesi and Paolo Ciancarini

09.10 – 09.30 break

09.30 – 09.50 Introducing Playing Style to Computer Go

by Esa Seuranen

09.50 – 10.10 Checking Life & Death Problems in Go. I: The Program ScanLD

by Thomas Wolf and Lei Shen:

10.10 – 10.30 A Retrograde Approximation Algorithm for Two-Player Can’t Stop

by James Glenn, Haw-ren Fang, and Clyde Kruskal

10.30 – 10.50 break

10.50 – 11.10 Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Backgammon

by François Van Lishout, Guillaume Chaslot, and Jos Uiterwijk

11.10 – 11.30 Extended General Gaming Model

by Michel Quenault and Tristan Cazenave

11.30 – 11.50 GTQL: A Query Language for Game Trees

by Yngvi Björnsson and Jónheidur Ísleifsdóttir

June 17, 2007 (Sunday)

08.30 – 12.00 Paper Presentation (III)

Session Chair Nicky Hekster

08.30 – 08.50 Selfish Search in Shogi

by Takeshi Ito

08.50 – 09.10 Extracting Important Features by Analyzing Game Records in Shogi

by Kosuke Tosaka, Asuka Takeuchi, Shunsuke Soeda, and Hitoshi Matsubara

09.10 – 09.30 break

09.30 – 09.50 The Monte-Carlo Approach in Amazons

by Julien Kloetzer and Hiroyuki Iida

09.50 – 10.10 Computing Elo Ratings of Move Patterns in the Game of Go

by Rémi Coulom

10.10 – 10.30 break

10.30 – 10.50 Reflexive Monte-Carlo Search

by Tristan Cazenave

10.50 – 11.10 Grouping Nodes for Monte-Carlo Tree Search

by Jahn-Takeshi Saito, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, and Jaap van den Herik

11.10 – 11.30 An Efficient Approach to Solve Mastermind Optimally

by Li-Te Huang, Shan-Tai Chen, Shi-Jie Huang, and Shun-Shii Lin

11.30 – 11.50 Solving 20 × 20 Puzzles

by Aleksander Sadikov and Ivan Bratko

11.50 – 12.00 Closing Address by Professor H.Jaap van den Herik