The main driving force of the General Game Playing
community is the Annual International General Game Playing Competition.
The competition is typically held in conjunction with the
national Conference on Artificial Intelligence sponsored by the AAAI.
That's the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Or sometimes it's the biennial IJCAI, and
that's the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The competition is administered by
Stanford University, so those of you who are
at Stanford are not eligible to participate unfortunately.
The competition began in 2005, and it's run
annually ever since, and with the exception of 2009.
And it's been won by players from various different
countries, including the US and Germany, France, and Iceland.
Here's a photo of Jim Clune, the winner of the
first GGB competition being congratulated by the AAA president, Ron Rockman.
Jim was obviously pleased in his player having won, or that smile might
be due in part to the $10,000 he received for winning the competition.
Here we have Michael Thielscher and Stephan Schiffel
from Dresden, winners of the competition at AAAIO6.
On the left here we have Helmer Vincent and Ing Ve Burenesen, the winners in 2007
and 8 and again in 2012. And they're there together with Michael
Telsheer and stuff on and Michael Shiffer and Michael Telsheer, the winners in 2006.
And there's Jim Clune on the right, the winner from 2005.
And finally, here we have Hilmar Finnsson congratulating
a beaming Sam Schreiber at the end of GGP-11.
the contest is exciting, but even the spectators get in on the action.
Without getting into any specifics here, let me just say that some of
the people, at the competition have come
away from those sessions wealthier than beforehand.
In addition to the regular GGB competition there's
now an annual battle between carbon and silicon.
Unfortunately for us, the beams are not doing that well.
for example, 2012, Katya player handily defeated the human race,
represented here by Chris Welty shown with some of his advisors.
Keeping with the format of the
competition, the contestants play two different games.
And the first Katya
player handily defeated the human in a well played match of dual Connect Four.
And it then won a match of Platform Jumpers.
Its consolation prize, the human was awarded two bottles of scotch by the way.
In part, to ease his disappointment in letting down the human race.