Review of Kalah Game Research and the Proposition of a Novel Heuristic–Deterministic Algorithm Compared to Tree-Search Solutions and Human Decision-Making

Libor Pekař,Martina Litschmannová,Radek Matušů,Jiří Andrla

doi:10.3390/informatics7030034

Libor Pekař, Martina Litschmannová + Show 2 more

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The Kalah game represents the most popular version of probably the oldest board game ever—the Mancala game. From this viewpoint, the art of playing Kalah can contribute to cultural heritage. This paper primarily focuses on a review of Kalah history and on a survey of research made so far for solving and analyzing the Kalah game (and some other related Mancala games). This review concludes that even if strong in-depth tree-search solutions for some types of the game were already published, it is still reasonable to develop less time-consumptive and computationally-demanding playing algorithms and their strategies Therefore, the paper also presents an original heuristic algorithm based on particular deterministic strategies arising from the analysis of the game rules. Standard and modified mini–max tree-search algorithms are introduced as well. A simple C++ application with Qt framework is developed to perform the algorithm verification and comparative experiments. Two sets of benchmark tests are made; namely, a tournament where a mid–experienced amateur human player competes with the three algorithms is introduced first. Then, a round-robin tournament of all the algorithms is presented. It can be deduced that the proposed heuristic algorithm has comparable success to the human player and to low-depth tree-search solutions. Moreover, multiple-case experiments proved that the opening move has a decisive impact on winning or losing. Namely, if the computer plays first, the human opponent cannot beat it. Contrariwise, if it starts to play second, using the heuristic algorithm, it nearly always loses.

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The art and ability of playing games are widely considered as a kind of human intelligence.Game playing represents the most suitable environment for studying complicated problem-solving [1].This paradigm exists because games are perceived as models of real-life decision-making, social behavior [2,3], conflict situations [4], knowledge acquisition [5,6], economic prosperity [7], or even climate change perspectives [8] throughout various nations and cultures [9]
Since the aims of this paper are to provide a survey on Kalah and to propose novel heuristic strategies, it is worth noting that only a necessary effort has been made to develop the Graphic User Interface (GUI), which does not meet a graphical attractiveness
The primary aim of this paper has been to provide the reader with an overview of Kalah games) history, solution of the game, and the research made

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Game playing represents the most suitable environment for studying complicated problem-solving [1]. This paradigm exists because games are perceived as models of real-life decision-making, social behavior [2,3], conflict situations [4], knowledge acquisition [5,6], economic prosperity [7], or even climate change perspectives [8] throughout various nations and cultures [9]. Nowadays, terms such as “good games” [11], “serious games” [12], “gameful design” [13]. Educational objectives are the main reason for designing these concepts

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