CSc 180 -- Fall 2004
Intelligent Systems

2004 Tournament Results - "Pawnstop"

Thanks to everyone who participated in the CSC-196L "Pawnstop" tournament.
It ran remarkably smoothly, with luckily very little tie-breaking needed.
We also had a small smattering of spectators, and enjoyed projecting some
of the final matches for everyone to watch.

Congratulations to our clear winner, "DEAD END", by Jason Chang.
Dead End used alpha-beta pruning to search 10 plies, along with a
sophisticated evaluation function, to dominate the tournament.
It went 6-0 in Round One, 4-0 in Round Two, 3-1 in Round Three,
and a staggering 6-0 in the Finals, for a whopping 19-1 overall.
Nobody else was close.  The difference seemed less a matter of
searching power (several others searched as deep), but more a matter
of Jason's closer attention to what makes for an effective strategy
in this particular game.

Arthur Holton's program, "Captain Coconut", was the program that took
the lone single game against Dead End in Round Three.

The 2nd-4th finishers all scored 1-1 against each other.  However, A1 was
rather arbitrarily omitted from the final-4, and when pitted against the
others (later), it went 1-1 against Lil'Brudder, but 0-2 against Hannah
and Muncher.  Thus the final placement with Hannah and Muncher tied for 2nd.

The placements between 8th and 12th are not perfect, and various orderings
could be argued.  Otherwise, there were enough results to produce a fairly
clear ranking.

And, the game of PAWNSTOP remains unsolved!

       1. Dead End             (Chang)
(tie)  2. Hannah               (Bettencourt)
          Muncher              (Gordon)
       4. Lil'Brudder          (Hjelden)
       5. A1                   (Kato)
(tie)  6. Captain Coconut      (Holton)
          Arnold               (Silva)
       8. Gregorian Pawnalong  (Dias)
(tie)  9. Linebacker           (Meyer)
          Newbie Annihilator   (Tan)
(tie) 11. Negaman              (Kusler)
          Defiler              (Calderon)
(tie) 13. DT                   (Becker)
          Pawn Slayer          (Sheppard)
      15. PawnShock            (Weatherly)
      16. Punching Bag         (Su)
      17. Pawnzilla            (Noble)
      18. The Yeti             (Hefner)
(tie) 19. Gandhi               (Gutierrez)
          Pawn Seer            (Young)