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A Comparison of Algorithms for Multi-player Games

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Computers and Games (CG 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2883))

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Abstract

The maxn algorithm for playing multi-player games is flexible, but there are only limited techniques for pruning maxn game trees. This paper presents other theoretical limitations of the maxn algorithm, namely that tie-breaking strategies are crucial to maxn, and that zero-window search is not possible in maxn game trees. We also present quantitative results derived from playing maxn and the paranoid algorithm (Sturtevant and Korf, 2000) against each other on various multi-player game domains, showing that paranoid widely outperforms maxn in Chinese checkers, by a lesser amount in Hearts and that they are evenly matched in Spades. We also confirm the expected results for the asymptotic branching factor improvements of the paranoid algorithm over maxn.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles

    Nathan Sturtevant

Authors
  1. Nathan Sturtevant
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Science Department, University of Alberta, T6G 2E8, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Jonathan Schaeffer

  2. Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, T6G 2E8, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Martin Müller

  3. School of Computer Science, Reykjavík University, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Yngvi Björnsson

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Sturtevant, N. (2003). A Comparison of Algorithms for Multi-player Games. In: Schaeffer, J., Müller, M., Björnsson, Y. (eds) Computers and Games. CG 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2883. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-40031-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-40031-8_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20545-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-40031-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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