If the only tool you have...

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow

This week, I've been experimenting with Monte Carlo methods for a Pentago AI player. I've written pattern-based AI players for Pentago before and (somewhere) I've got an unfinished implementation that uses Minimax as well.

I didn't really expect much from this little experimental player (it's only about 100 lines of Python code) but it has turned out to be "not too bad". Despite the fact that it only considers one game state at a time... maybe that says more about my other players though ;-)

I'll try to add MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search) during this week, maybe even UCT (Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees) which ought to make the player quite a bit stronger.