“ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ITT451

UNIT III
GAME PLAYING

By

Ms.C.B.Thaokar
Assistant Professor
Department of Information Technology
RCOEM
 SYLLABUS

 Games
 Minimax Algorithm
 Alpha – Beta Pruning
 Games that include an element of Chance

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WHY STUDY GAME PLAYING?
 Games allow us to experiment with easier versions of
real-world situations
 Hostile agents act against our goals
 Games have a finite set of moves
 Games are fairly easy to represent
 Good idea to decide about what to think
 Perfection is unrealistic, must settle for good
 One of the earliest areas of AI
 Claude Shannon and Alan Turing wrote chess programs in
1950s
 The opponent introduces uncertainty
 The environment may contain uncertainty
(backgammon)
 Search space too hard to consider exhaustively
 Chess has about 1040 legal positions
 Efficient and effective search strategies even more critical 3
 Games are fun to target!
ASSUMPTIONS
 Static or dynamic?
 Fully or partially observable?

 Discrete or continuous?

 Deterministic or stochastic?

 Episodic or sequential?

 Single agent or multiple agent?

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 ZERO-SUM GAMES
 Focus primarily on “adversarial games”
 Two-player, zero-sum games

As Player 1 gains strength

Player 2 loses strength

and vice versa

The sum of the two strengths is always 0. 5

SEARCH APPLIED TO ADVERSARIAL
GAMES
 Initial state
 Currentboard position (description of current
game state)
 Operators
 Legal moves a player can make
 Terminal nodes
 Leaf nodes in the tree
 Indicate the game is over
 Utility function
 Payoff function
 Value of the outcome of a game
 Example: tic tac toe, utility is -1, 0, or 1

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USING SEARCH
 Search could be used to find a perfect sequence
of moves except the following problems arise:
 There exists an adversary who is trying to minimize
your chance of winning every other move
 You cannot control his/her move
 Search trees can be very large, but you have finite
time to move
 Chess has 1040 nodes in search space
 With single-agent search, can afford to wait

 Some two-player games have time limits

 Solution?

 Search to n levels in the tree (n ply)

 Evaluate the nodes at the nth level

 Head for the best looking node

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GAME TREES
 Tic tac toe
 Two players, MAX and MIN

 Moves (and levels) alternate between two players

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MINIMAX ALGORITHM
 Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm which is used
in decision-making and game theory
 Mini-Max algorithm uses recursion to search through the game-tree.
 Min-Max algorithm is mostly used for game playing in AI. Such as Chess,
Checkers, tic-tac-toe, go, and various two-players game.
 In this algorithm two players play the game, one is called MAX and
other is called MIN.
 Both the players fight it as the opponent player gets the minimum
benefit while they get the maximum benefit.
 Both Players of the game are opponent of each other, where MAX will
select the maximized value and MIN will select the minimized value.
 The minimax algorithm performs a depth-first search algorithm for the
exploration of the complete game tree.
 The minimax algorithm proceeds all the way down to the terminal node
of the tree, then backtrack the tree as the recursion 9
 PSEUDO CODE FOR MINIMAX ALGORITHM
function minimax(node, depth, maximizingPlayer) is
if depth ==0 or node is a terminal node then
return static evaluation of node

if MaximizingPlayer then // for Maximizer Player

maxEva= -infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, false)
maxEva= max(maxEva,eva) //gives Maximum of the values
return maxEva

else // for Minimizer player

minEva= +infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, true)
minEva= min(minEva, eva) //gives minimum of the values 10

return minEva
WORKING OF MIN-MAX ALGORITHM:
 The working of the minimax algorithm can be easily described
using an example.
 In this example, there are two players one is called Maximizer

and other is called Minimizer.

 Maximizer will try to get the Maximum possible score, and

Minimizer will try to get the minimum possible score.

 This algorithm applies DFS, so in this game-tree, we have to

go all the way through the leaves to reach the terminal nodes.
 At the terminal node, the terminal values are given so we will

compare those value and backtrack the tree until the initial
state occurs. Following are the main steps involved in solving
the two-player game tree:

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MINIMAX EXAMPLE
 Step-1: In the first step, the algorithm generates the entire game-tree and
apply the utility function to get the utility values for the terminal states. In the
below tree diagram, let's take A is the initial state of the tree. Suppose
maximizer takes first turn which has worst-case initial value =- infinity, and
minimizer will take next turn which has worst-case initial value = +infinity.

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MINIMAX EXAMPLE
Step 2: Now, first we find the
utilities value for the Maximizer,
its initial value is -∞, so we will
compare each value in terminal
state with initial value of
Maximizer and determines the
higher nodes values. It will find
the maximum among the all.
For node D max(-1,- -∞) = max(-1,4)=
4
For Node E max(2, -∞) = max(2, 6)=
6
For Node F max(-3, -∞) = max(-3,-5)
= -3
For node G max(0, -∞) = max(0, 7) 13
=7
MINIMAX EXAMPLE
 Step 3: In the next step, it's a turn for minimizer, so it will compare all
nodes value with +∞, and will find the 3 rd layer node values.
 For node B= min(4,6) = 4
 For node C= min (-3, 7) = -3

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MINIMAX EXAMPLE
 Step 4: Now it's a turn for Maximizer, and it will again choose the maximum
of all nodes value and find the maximum value for the root node. In this game
tree, there are only 4 layers, hence we reach immediately to the root node, but
in real games, there will be more than 4 layers.
 For node A max(4, -3)= 4

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 Example : 5 Stone NIM Game
 Problem Statement :
5 stone Nim is a game played by 2 players and consists of pile
of 5 stones.
 Each player can remove either one or two stones from the pile

on its turn
 The player who removes the last stone wins the game

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EXAMPLE : 5 STONE NIM GAME

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 MiniMax Theorem
 Every two person zero sum game is forced
to win for one player or a forced draw for
either player, in principle these minimax
startegies can be computed.
 Brute Force Approach

- We begin with purely brute force approach

to
game playing
- This is feasible for small games but
provides a
basis for further discussions.
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 Performance of Minimax
 If we could draw the entire search tree , we
would know what to do , but search tree get
very big very fast.
 Example : game tree for chess

- chess has average branching factor of about

35
b = 35
- Games are often have about 50 moves i.e
each
player plays 50 i.e 50 x 2 =100
- d= 2 * 50 =100
- - Therefore size of the game tree would be

- 35 100 ᷈ 10 154
 ISSUES IN PRACTICAL GAMES AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

o What is the solutions? 4 max

o Use cutoff -2 4 min

-Search upto fixed cutoff -1 -2 4 9

-we than estimate the utility at that

cutoff by using some evaluation
function.
- We propagate these values up.

? ? ? ?
CUTOFF AND MINIMAX
EXAMPLE

89 89

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EVALUATION FUNCTIONS
 Evaluation functions score non-terminals in
depth-limited search

 Ideal function: returns the actual minimax value

of the position
 In practice: typically weighted linear sum of
features:

 e.g. f1(s) = (num white pieces – num black

PROPERTIES OF MINI-MAX ALGORITHM:
 Complete- Min-Max algorithm is Complete. It will definitely
find a solution (if exist), in the finite search tree.
 Optimal- Min-Max algorithm is optimal if both opponents are

playing optimally.
 Time complexity- As it performs DFS for the game-tree, so

the time complexity of Min-Max algorithm is O(bm), where b

is branching factor of the game-tree, and m is the maximum
depth of the tree.
 Space Complexity- Space complexity of Mini-max algorithm

is also similar to DFS which is O(bm).

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LIMITATION OF THE MINIMAX
ALGORITHM:
 The main drawback of the minimax algorithm is that it
gets really slow for complex games such as Chess, go,
etc.
 This type of games has a huge branching factor, and the

player has lots of choices to decide.

 This limitation of the minimax algorithm can be

improved from alpha-beta pruning .

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ALPHA-BETA PRUNING
 Alpha-beta pruning is a modified version of the minimax algorithm.
It is an optimization technique for the minimax algorithm.

 As we have seen in the minimax search algorithm that the number of

game states it has to examine are exponential in depth of the tree.
Since we cannot eliminate the exponent, but we can cut it to half.
Hence there is a technique by which without checking each node of
the game tree we can compute the correct minimax decision, and this
technique is called pruning.

 This involves two threshold parameter Alpha and beta for future
expansion, so it is called alpha-beta pruning. It is also called
as Alpha-Beta Algorithm.

 Alpha-beta pruning can be applied at any depth of a tree, and

sometimes it not only prune the tree leaves but also entire sub-tree. 25
ALPHA-BETA PRUNING

Do we really want to examine all the nodes?

3 5 2 ? ?

Eg2 :
minimax(root) = max( min(3,12,8), min(2,z,y), min(14,5,2))
= max ( 3, z , 2) ; z <=2 assume 26
= 3
ALPHA-BETA PRUNING

 The two-parameter can be defined as:

 Alpha: The best (highest-value) choice we have found so far at
any point along the path of Maximizer. The initial value of
alpha is -∞.
 Beta: The best (lowest-value) choice we have found so far at
any point along the path of Minimizer. The initial value of beta
is +∞.

 The Alpha-beta pruning to a standard minimax algorithm

returns the same move as the standard algorithm does, but it
removes all the nodes which are not really affecting the final
decision but making algorithm slow. Hence by pruning these
nodes, it makes the algorithm fast.
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ALPHA BETA VALUES

 Alpha values
- A lower bound on exact minimax score
- True value might >=α

 Beta values
- A upper bound on exact minimax score
- True value might <= β

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CONDITION FOR ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

The main condition which is required for alpha-beta

pruning is:
 α cutoff :

- It occurs at min node

- β <= α value of any Max ancestor

 β cutoff :
- It occurs at max node
- α >= β value of any Min ancestor

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KEY POINTS ABOUT ALPHA-BETA
PRUNING:

 The Max player will only update the value of

alpha.
 The Min player will only update the value of

beta.
 While backtracking the tree, the node values

will be passed to upper nodes instead of

values of alpha and beta.
 We will only pass the alpha, beta values to

the child nodes. 30

PSEUDO-CODE FOR ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:
function minimax(node, depth, alpha, beta, maximizingPlayer) is
if depth ==0 or node is a terminal node then
return static evaluation of node

if MaximizingPlayer then // for Maximizer Player

maxEva= -infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, alpha, beta, False)
maxEva= max(maxEva, eva)
alpha= max(alpha, maxEva)
if beta<=alpha
break
return maxEva
else // for Minimizer player
minEva= +infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, alpha, beta, true)
minEva= min(minEva, eva)
beta= min(beta, eva)
if beta<=alpha 31
break
return minEva
 EX-1 WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

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EX-2 WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:
 Step 1: At the first step the, Max player will start first move from node A
where α= -∞ and β= +∞, these value of alpha and beta passed down to
node B where again α= -∞ and β= +∞, and Node B passes the same value
to its child D.

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WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:
 Step 2: At Node D, the value of α will be calculated as its turn
for Max. The value of α is compared with firstly 2 and then 3,
and the max (2, 3) = 3 will be the value of α at node D and
node value will also 3.

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WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

Step 3: Now algorithm

backtrack to node B, where
the value of β will change
as this is a turn of Min,
Now β= +∞, will compare
with the available
subsequent nodes value, i.e.
min (∞, 3) = 3, hence at
node B now α= -∞, and β=
3.

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WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

Step 4: At node E, Max

will take its turn, and the
value of alpha will change.
The current value of alpha
will be compared with 5, so
max (-∞, 5) = 5, hence at
node E α= 5 and β= 3,
where α>=β, so the right
successor of E will be
pruned, and algorithm will
not traverse it, and the
value at node E will be 5. 36
WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:
Step 5: At next step, algorithm again
backtrack the tree, from node B
to node A. At node A, the value
of alpha will be changed the
maximum available value is
3 as max (-∞, 3)= 3, and β= +∞,
these two values now passes to right
successor of A which is
Node C.
At node C, α=3 and β= +∞,
and the same values will be passed
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on to node F.
WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

Step 6: At node F, again the

value of α will be compared
with left child which is 0, and
max(3,0)= 3, and then
compared with right child
which is 1, and max(3,1)= 3
still α remains 3, but the node
value of F will become 1.

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WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

Step 7: Node F returns the

node value 1 to node C, at C
α= 3 and β= +∞, here the
value of beta will be changed,
it will compare with 1 so min
(∞, 1) = 1. Now at C, α=3 and
β= 1, and again it satisfies the
condition α>=β, so the next
child of C which is G will be
pruned, and the algorithm will
not compute the entire sub-
tree G.
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WORKING OF ALPHA-BETA PRUNING:

Step 8: C now returns the value of 1 to A here the best value for A is max
(3, 1) = 3. Following is the final game tree which is the showing the nodes
which are computed and nodes which has never computed. Hence the
optimal value for the maximizer is 3 for this example.

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 EG-2 ALPHA-BETA PRUNING

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MOVE ORDERING IN ALPHA-BETA
PRUNING:
 Itcan be of two types:
 Worst ordering: In some cases, alpha-beta pruning
algorithm does not prune any of the leaves of the tree, and
works exactly as minimax algorithm. In this case, it also
consumes more time because of alpha-beta factors, such a
move of pruning is called worst ordering. In this case, the
best move occurs on the right side of the tree. The time
complexity for such an order is O(bm).
 Ideal ordering: The ideal ordering for alpha-beta pruning
occurs when lots of pruning happens in the tree, and best
moves occur at the left side of the tree. We apply DFS
hence it first search left of the tree and go deep twice as
minimax algorithm in the same amount of time.
Complexity in ideal ordering is O(bm/2).
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RULES TO FIND GOOD ORDERING:
 Following are some rules to find good ordering in alpha-
beta pruning:
 Occur the best move from the shallowest node.

 Order the nodes in the tree such that the best nodes are

checked first.
 Use domain knowledge while finding the best move. Ex:

for Chess, try order: captures first, then threats, then

forward moves, backward moves.
 We can bookkeep the states, as there is a possibility that

states may repeat.

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