Chapter 5:

Games:
Adversarial Search

Textbook: Artificial Intelligence Foundations of

Computational Agents, 2nd Edition, David L.
Poole and Alan K Mackworth, Cambridge
University Press, 2018.
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 Outline
• Games vs. search problems
• MAX-MIN pruning
• Imperfect, real-time decisions
 Introduction
Why study games?

1. Fun; historically entertaining

2. Interesting subject of study because they are hard

to solve.

3. Easy to represent and agents restricted to small

number of actions whose outcomes are defined rules
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There are two extremes in the study of multiagent
systems:
1. Fully cooperative, where the agents share the
same utility function, and
2. Fully competitive, when one agent can only
win when another loses; in zero-sum games,
for every outcome, the sum of the utilities for
the agents is zero

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 AI Games

• Games have engaged the intellectual faculties of

humans.

• Sometimes to an alarming degree as long as

civilization has existed

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 Games vs. search problems
• "Unpredictable" opponent  specifying a move
for every possible opponent reply

• Time limits  unlikely to find goal, must

approximate
 Games vs. search problems
Theorists call
• Deterministic or Turn-taking or Two-player or zero-
sum or perfect information

• In AI, this means deterministic, fully observable

environ in which there are two agents whose
actions must alternate and in which the utility value
at the end of the game are always equal and
opposite
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 Types of Games
Games might be either:-

1. Zero-sum games: a player’s gains are exactly

subtracted from other player’s score(chess)

2. Non-zero-sum games: players can gain or lose

without an exact change on others (prisoners’
dilemma)

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 Zero-sum games

Rules:
1. If a player wins a game ( +1 )
2. If a player loses a game ( - 1 )
3. Otherwise a draw (0)

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 Example1: Pick Stick Game
Strategy:
1. PC Vs User each picks min 1 stick or maximum 3
sticks first
2. User starts picks first
3. Payoff
PC must win always ( + 1 )

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 Example2: Pick Stick Dame
Play:
1. Range of picks = 3
2. (n mod 3) ==0
3. Sticks = 9

User PC Total Sticks =9

2 1 6
1 2 3
2 1 0
PC
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wins ( + 1 ) Asst. Prof. Abdulle Hassan
 Example3 : Pick Stick Game
Play:
1. Range of picks = 4
2. (n mod 4) ==0
3. Sticks = 12

User PC Total Sticks =12

3 1 8
2 2 4
1 3 0
PC
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wins ( + 1 ) Asst. Prof. Abdulle Hassan
 Example4 : Pick Stick Game
Play:
Range of picks = 5; (n mod 5) ==0; Sticks = 25

User PC Total Sticks =25

4 1 20
2 3 15
3 2 10
1 4 5
3 2 0
PC
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wins ( + 1 ) Asst. Prof. Abdulle Hassan
 Game of Coins

Strategy:
1. Initial state:7 matches in a pile
2. Each player must divide a pile into two non-empty
unequal piles
3. Player who can’t do that loses
Payoff
+1 win, -1 loss

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 Game of Coins

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 Example of Game of Coins

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 Class Work
You and your partner have 11 Coins. Each
player must divide the pile of 11 Coins into two
non-empty unequal piles. The player who can’t do
that loses

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 TICTACTOE

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 TICTACTOE

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Winning Strategy

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Winning Strategy

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Winning Strategy

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Winning Strategy

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 Winning Strategy

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 Winning Strategy

Class work
How many potential Winning strategies are
there in TicTacToe Game?

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 Minimax Game

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 Minimax Game
• MIN((3, 12, 9), (2, 4, 6), (14, 5, 2)) = 3, 2, 2

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 Minimax Game
• MIN((3, 12, 9), (2, 4, 6), (14, 5, 2)) = 3, 2, 2

• MAX(3, 2, 2) = 3

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 Minimax Game
• MIN((3, 12, 9), (2, 4, 6), (14, 5, 2)) = 3, 2, 2

• MAX(3, 2, 2) = 3

• MIN(3) : FAILS

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 Minimax Game

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 Rock – Paper – Scissors Game
• Alice chooses a row and Bob chooses a column,
simultaneously. This gives a pair of numbers: the
first number is the payoff to the row player (Alice)
and the second gives the payoff to the column
player (Bob).
• Note that the utility for each of them depends on
what both players do.
• An example of an action profile is ⟨scissorsAlice,
rockBob⟩, where Alice chooses scissors and Bob
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chooses rock. In Asst.
this action, Alice receives the
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utility of −1 and Bob receives the utility of 1.
 Rock – Paper – Scissors Game
•

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 Imperfect, real-time decisions
• Imperfect-information game is a partially
observable game, an agent does not fully know
the state of the world or the agents act
simultaneously.
• Partial observability for the multiagent case is
more complicated than the fully observable
multiagent case or the partially observable
single-agent case.

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 Imperfect, real-time decisions
• The kicker can kick to his left or right and the
goalkeeper can jump to left or right.

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 Imperfect, real-time decisions
• A resource with two agents may want to fight over.
Each agent chooses to act as a hawk or as a dove.
• If both agents act as doves, they share the
resource.
• If one agent acts as a hawk and the other as a
dove, the hawk agent gets the resource and the
dove agent gets nothing.
• If they both act like hawks, there is destruction of
the resource and the reward to both is −D, where D
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Imperfect, real-time decisions

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Programming Assignment: [2% Marks]
Sticks:
• Write a program that solves the Sticks Problem

Deadline: 30 Oct. 2022

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Programming Assignment: [2% Marks]
TicTacToe:
• Write a program that solves the Tictactoe Problem

Deadline: 30 Oct. 2022

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Programming Assignment: [2% Marks]
Rock, Paper & Scissor Game:
• Write a program that solves the RSP Problem

Deadline: 30 Oct. 2022

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End

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