Challenges

Albert Version 4.0 Human Challenge (Concluded June 2009)

1 Human vs 6 Alberts

The results below are from my request for a 7 game tournament with Alberts. The objective was to play no-press games of 1 human vs 6 Albert_v4s and record the game summaries using an automated observerbot. The results from this version of Albert lacked games ending in draws. In fact of the 106 games recorded only 3 were draws. (This has been improved in later releases.) There will come a time when I will run this type of challenge again... and this will serve as a nice benchmark.

A total of 9 people participated with several people playing more than the 7-games. The majority of players had around 10 years experience. It seemed that some people could defeat Albert easier than others, and I think it had a lot to do with playing styles, and less to do with diplomacy experience.

The results were that the humans won slightly over 50% of the time. That is 3.5 times more than theoretical, and obviously far superior. But what I take from it is that at least Albert is putting up a challenge... and as far as entertainment goes, is in a reasonable zone if it can accomplish a 50% win rate over experienced players. I would expect that Albert is already a formidable challenge for new players and I hope to improve on these numbers in later releases.

I thank everyone who participated in the challenge. i realize it is a small sample, but it is a begining.