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Adversarial Search: Section 1 - 4

1. Adversarial search techniques like minimax and alpha-beta pruning are used to find optimal decisions in two-player games by considering all possible moves by both players. 2. Alpha-beta pruning improves on minimax by avoiding evaluating game states that cannot change the outcome, reducing search time. 3. For real-time games, heuristic evaluation functions are used to estimate position value instead of fully evaluating game trees due to time limits.

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61 views21 pages

Adversarial Search: Section 1 - 4

1. Adversarial search techniques like minimax and alpha-beta pruning are used to find optimal decisions in two-player games by considering all possible moves by both players. 2. Alpha-beta pruning improves on minimax by avoiding evaluating game states that cannot change the outcome, reducing search time. 3. For real-time games, heuristic evaluation functions are used to estimate position value instead of fully evaluating game trees due to time limits.

Uploaded by

merajul islam
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Adversarial Search

Chapter 6
Section 1 – 4
Outline
• Optimal decisions
• α-β pruning
• Imperfect, real-time decisions
Games vs. search problems
• "Unpredictable" opponent → specifying a
move for every possible opponent reply
•
• Time limits → unlikely to find goal, must
approximate
•
Game tree (2-player,
deterministic, turns)
Minimax
• Perfect play for deterministic games
•
• Idea: choose move to position with highest minimax
value
= best achievable payoff against best play
•
• E.g., 2-ply game:
•
Minimax algorithm
Properties of minimax
• Complete? Yes (if tree is finite)
•
• Optimal? Yes (against an optimal opponent)
•
• Time complexity? O(bm)
•
• Space complexity? O(bm) (depth-first exploration)
•

• For chess, b ≈ 35, m ≈100 for "reasonable" games


→ exact solution completely infeasible
•
α-β pruning example
α-β pruning example
α-β pruning example
α-β pruning example
α-β pruning example
Properties of α-β
• Pruning does not affect final result

• Good move ordering improves effectiveness of pruning

• With "perfect ordering“, time complexity = O(bm/2)


• With “random ordering”, time complexity = O(b3m/4)

• A simple example of the value of reasoning about which


computations are relevant (a form of metareasoning)
Why is it called α-β?
• α is the value of the best (i.e.,
highest-value) choice found so
far at any choice point along
the path for max

• If v is worse than α, max will


avoid it

→ prune that branch

• Define β similarly for min


The α-β algorithm
The α-β algorithm
Resource limits
• Alpha-beta allows us to prune large parts of the search tree.
• However, alpha–beta still has to search all the way to terminal states for at
least a portion of the search space.
• This depth is usually not practical.
• For real-time performance, the search tree needs be further shortened.

Techniques Proposed by Claude Shanon:

• Cutoff Test: e.g., depth limit


• Evaluation Function = estimated desirability of position
The Heuristic MiniMax Algorithm
• The suggestion is to alter minimax or alpha–beta in two ways:

• Replace the utility function by a heuristic evaluation function EVAL,


which estimates the position’s utility.
• Replace the terminal test by a cut-off test that decides when to apply
EVAL

• That gives us the following for heuristic minimax for state s and
maximum depth d:

•
Characteristics of a Good
Evaluation Function
• Fast !!!!
• For terminal states → should order them
the same way as true utility function.
• For nonterminal states → the evaluation
function should strongly be corelated with
the chance of wining.
Heuristic for Tic Tac Toe

• +100 for EACH 3-in-a-line for computer.


• +10 for EACH two-in-a-line (with a empty cell) for
computer.
• +1 for EACH one-in-a-line (with two empty cells) for
computer.
• Negative scores for opponent, i.e., -100, -10, -1 for
EACH opponent's 3-in-a-line, 2-in-a-line and 1-in-aline.
• 0 otherwise (empty lines or lines with both computer's
and opponent's seeds).
Evaluation function for Chess
• For chess, typically linear weighted sum of features
Eval(s) = w1 f1(s) + w2 f2(s) + … + wn fn(s)

• e.g., w1 = 9 with
f1(s) = (number of white queens) – (number of black
queens), etc.

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