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.