Strength Improvement and Analysis for an MCTS-Based Chinese Dark Chess Program

Abstract

Monte-Carlo tree search (MCTS) has been successfully applied to Chinese dark chess (CDC). In this paper, we study how to improve and analyze the playing strength of an MCTS-based CDC program, named DarkKnight, which won the CDC tournament in the 17th Computer Olympiad. We incorporate the three recent techniques, early playout terminations, implicit minimax backups, and quality-based rewards, into the program. For early playout terminations, playouts end when reaching states with likely outcomes. Implicit minimax backups use heuristic evaluations to help guide selections of MCTS. Quality-based rewards adjust rewards based on online collected information. Our experiments showed that the win rates against the original DarkKnight were 60.75 %, 70.90 % and 59.00 %, respectively for incorporating the three techniques. By incorporating all together, we obtained a win rate of 76.70 %.