General Game Playing Competition 2009
General Intelligence in Game-Playing Agents (GIGA'09)

News

• Pre-tournament playing results from the Dresden GGP Server have been published.

• Ten teams are registered for the 2009 GGP competition.

General Information

This year's GGP competition will be held in association with the GIGA'09 workshop at IJCAI on Saturday, July 11. The competition will be held in Ballroom F, Ballroom Building of the Pasadena Convention Center. Participating teams should be there promplty no later than 8am.

Competition Format

The competion will consists of two preliminary heats of 5 participants each, with the top 4 players advancing to the final heat and players in seats 4-8 play simlilarly in a consolation heat. Preliminary heats (5 players each):

• 2 1-player games which each player plays once
• 2 asymmetric 2-player games which each player plays twice
• 2 symmetric 2-player games which each player plays once
• 1 5-player game which each player plays once

Finals and consolation heats (4 players each):

• 2 single-player games which each player plays once
• 2 asymmetric 2-player games which each player plays 6 times (playing each role against each opponent in the heat)
• 1 symmetric 2-player game which each player plays 3 times (playing against each opponent)
• 1 4-player game which each player plays once

The preliminary heats are scheduled to take approximatley 3 hours, and the finals/consolation heats 3.5 hours. More detailed description of the competition format, including tie breaking rules, is found here.

Pre-tournament Playing Period

The results from the pre-tournament playing period (June 15-28) on the Dresden GGP Server are in. The results were as follows:

place	player	average score	# matches played	# matches no errors	error ratio
1	CadiaPlayer_lite	70.1856	862	848	0.0162
2	ary	66.9859	924	899	0.0271
3	TurboTurtle	56.1768	164	136	0.1707
4	Fluxplayer	52.2034	875	678	0.2251
5	centurio	49.3675	721	647	0.1026
6	Gamer	31.0576	330	171	0.4818
7	Hex	0.1053	19	2	0.8947
8	Ethan	0	0	0
9	Maligne	0	0	0

As a couple of the players did not participate, and others are still experiences substantial technical difficulties, we want to emphasize the importance of the authors getting their players to run robustly on the Dresden GGP Server before the IJCAI competition starts. We will be running on a tight schedule there so it is important that it runs as smooth as possible.

Competition Entries

The following teams registered for the 2009 GGP competition:

• Ary, Universite de Paris 8/10, France,
  • Jean Mehat (primary contact)
  • Tristan Cazenave
• CadiaPlayer, Reykjavik University, Iceland
  • Hilmar Finnsson (primary contact)
  • Yngvi Björnsson
• Centurio, University of Potsdam, Germany
  • Maximillian Möller (primary contact)
  • Marius Schneider
  • Martin Wegner
• Ethan, Stanford University, USA
  • Ethan Petrick Dreyfuss (primary contact)
• FluxPlayer, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
  • Stefan Schiffel (primary contact)
  • Michael Thielscher
• Gamer, TU Dortmund / TZI Bremen, Germany
  • Peter Kissmann (primary contact)
  • Stefan Edelkamp
• Hex, Carlos III University, Spain
• Ignacio Navarro (primary contact)
• Lucky Lemming, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
• Eva Wagner
• Martin Günther (primary contact)
• Stefan Diestelhorst
• Maligne, University of Alberta, Canada
• Nathan Sturtevant (primary contact)
• Neil Burch
• Jonathan Schaeffer
• Mesut Kirci
• Mohammad Shafiei
• Kevin Waugh
• Richard Valenzano
• Mehdi Samadi
• TurboTurtle, Independent (Stanford students), USA
• Sam Schreiber (primary contact)
• Steven Bills
• Mike Mintz

Registration

Registration for the 2009 GGP competition is now open. You must register by June 15th by following the below steps:

• Send an email to either (or both) contact persons listed below, stating: the name of your player; the name, affiliation, and email of each team member; and who is the primary contact person.
• Create an account for your player on the Dresden GGP Server (http://www.general-game-playing.de) and have it play there online as much as possible, in particular over the period June 15-28.
The latter step serves two purposes. Firstly, for verifying that your player adheres to the competition specifications (the same server software will run locally at the IJCAI competition) so potential incompatibilities can be detected early and fixed beforehand. Secondly, the match results on the server over the period June 15-28 will be used to help deciding players seeding and assignment to heats at the IJCAI competition.

Your player must be able to handle the various game types allowed by GDL, including single-agent games, two-player games, and multi-player games. Also, as of now it is unclear whether IJCAI will guarantee an Internet connection at the site duing the workshop period. So make sure that your player can run locally at IJCAI (or that you have alternative plans of how to connect remotely).

The final IJCAI competition format will be announced once we know the exact number of players.

Contacts

Please contact either of the GIGA'09 workshop organizers listed below to express interest in participating, or for other matters pertaining to the competition.

• Yngvi Björnsson
  School of Computer Science
  Reykjavik University
  Email:
  


• Michael Thielscher
  Department of Computer Science
  Dresden University of Technology
  Email:
  

Links

General information about GGP:
• General Game Playing Wiki
Links to sites that have useful resources for prospective GGP developers:
• GIGA'09 Workshop on GGP
• General Game Playing (Dresden)
• General Game Playing (Stanford)