First Gothello Machine World Championship Tournament

The First Gothello Machine World Championship Tournament was held Thursday, December 13 2001 in the Intel Linux Laboratory. The tournament was hosted by the Fall 2001 Portland State University Computer Science Department CS 441/541 Artificial Intelligence course as the culmination of their Gothello player project.

A total of 12 programs participated in the tournament. (All programs that could communicate with the referee and that were not expressly excluded by their authors were entered.) The tournament report can be summarized as follows:

The First Gothello Machine World Champion is Thunderhammer by Dan Burke. This program dominated the competition, winning every game played. In addition to the standard graduate student requirements, this entry featured a well-tuned heuristic evaluator and high-quality time management.

Honorable mentions to

• Osama Neiroukh for Gigathello, which played a very strong game against all opponents, and placed a clear second.
• Scott Long for Unshallow, which played a very respectable game.
• Jianxiang Huang's unnamed adaptation of my Grossthello program, which did a reasonably deep and well-pruned search to make the finals.

Thanks much to all who participated! I had a lot of fun, and am looking forward to seeing you all in the future.