Arimaa

Arimaa ⁱ/əˈriːmə/ (ə-REE-mə) is a two-player strategy board game that was designed to be playable with a standard chess set and difficult for computers while still being easy to learn and fun to play for humans. Every year since 2004, the Arimaa community has held three tournaments: a World Championship (humans only), a Computer Championship (computers only), and the Arimaa Challenge (human vs. computer). In 2015, the challenge was won decisively by the computer (Sharp by David Wu), with top players agreeing it was no fluke but proof that computers are currently superior to humans. As it was a prerequisite for the prize to be awarded, most of ICGA Journal Issue 38/1 was dedicated to this topic.

Arimaa was invented in 2003 by Omar Syed, an Indian American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which could be played with a standard chess set, would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his then four-year-old son Aamir to understand. ("Arimaa" is "Aamir" spelled backwards plus an initial "a".)