Games and AI Group

Chinese Checkers is a race game that can be played by two to six players. The game was invented in 1893 and since then has been released by various publishers under different names. Chinese Checkers is a popular test domain for multi-player search techniques such as Maxⁿ, Paranoid, Best-Reply Search, and Monte-Carlo Tree Search.

The goal for each player is to move all his pieces to his home base at the other side of the board. Pieces may move to one of the adjacent fields or they may jump over another piece to an empty field. Players are also allowed to make multiple jumps with one piece in one turn, making it possible to create a setup that allows pieces to jump over a large distance. The first player who manages to fill his home base wins the game.

Key Publications:

• Nijssen, J.A.M. (2013). Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Multi-Player Games. Ph.D. Thesis, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
• Nijssen, J.A.M. and Winands, M.H.M. (2013). Search Policies in Multi-Player Games. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 3-21.
• Schadd, M.P.D. and Winands, M.H.M. (2011). Best Reply Search for Multi-Player Games. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 57-66. © IEEE.