My research concerns solving games using Artificial Intelligence techniques. My present focus is on 2 topics, positional games and combinatorial games.
Positional games
Positional games are games where two players (commonly Black and White) consecutively claim a square on some grid. Mostly a rectangular grid (the board) is used. Further a set of subsets of the board is given denoted as the winning sets. The first player getting all squares in a winning set wins the game. If the winning sets are all straight lines of k consecutive stones (the groups) on a rectangular m x n board, the games is a so-called k-in-a-row game, more precisely an mnk-game. Well-known examples include TicTacToe (the 3,3,3-game) and Go-Moku (the 19,19,5- or sometimes 15,15,5-game).
Some of my recent publications on this topic:
- J.W.H.M. Uiterwijk (2018). Set Matching with Applications: An Enhancement of the Hales-Jewett Pairing Strategy. ICGA Journal, in press
- J.W.H.M. Uiterwijk (2017). Set Matching: An Enhancement of the Hales-Jewett Pairing Strategy. Advances in Computer Games: 15th International Conference, ACG 2017 (Eds. M.H.M. Winands, H.J. van den Herik, and W.A. Kosters), Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 10664, pp. 38-50. Springer Int. Publ. AG.