Constructing an AI player for Pentago

I wrote my first AI player for Pentago a year and a half ago. It is a simple player which uses board patterns to decide where to place the next marble and which block to turn. I had no idea at the time that what I'd done was basically a very limited and modified implementation of the Markov Algorithm.

The player is simple but the implementation isn't trivial. Each pattern is expressed as a function returning either None or a tuple specifying where to place the next marble and optionally which block to turn.

Here is the function for placing the next marble:

>>> def placeMarker(self):
...   for method in [  self.winIfPossible,
...                    self.avoidImmediateLoss,
...                    self.blockThreeInARow,
...                    self.captureCenterPositions,
...                    self.blockFourInASquare,
...                    self.positionFourInASquare,
...                    self.positionThreeInARow,
...                    self.positionTwoInARow,
...                    self.any, ]:
...     p = method(self.game.getBoard())
...     if p is not None:
...       return p % 6, p / 6

There is also a method called rotateSquare performing similar work.

This player isn't very good but it isn't very bad either. It's remarkable how few patterns you actually need to get a "decent" player.

The problem with this implementation is that it takes a lot of effort to add a pattern. Once I learned about the Markov Algorithm I was able to re-structure the code such that adding a pattern is as easy as adding (for example) "???$*AA$???" to the Rules repository (I know that the example, and the whole pattern language, is a bit cryptic but I'll post about that some other time).

"???$*AA$???" can actually be used for both blockThreeInARow and positionTwoInARow (it all depends on who's turn it is). Using the Markov Algorithm requires *more* patterns to be described but since they're simpler it's a net win (in lines of code). To describe the winIfPossible pattern I need to specify it as three different patterns (because you can win horizontally, vertically and diagonally).

Of course, this type of player can never play better than I can (since I have to feed it patterns in order for it to improve). So my next move is to implement a Minimax player.