New Trends in Clobber Programming

Abstract

Clobber is an abstract, two-player, strategy game invented in 2001 by the combinatorial game theorists Michael H. Albert, J. P. Grossman and Richard Nowakowski. In 2005 and 2006 it was one of the events in the Computer Olympiad. Despite a very simple rule set, not only is Clobber a hard game from the perspective of the theory of combinatorial games, but also in its computer implementation. This article provides a detailed exposition of four heuristic algorithms for playing the game. These algorithms were used in programs which took four leading places in a computer Clobber tournament at Silesian University.