Arimaa is a two-player board game invented by Omar Syed, a computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his four-year-old son Aamir to understand. ("Arimaa" is "Aamir" spelled backwards plus an initial "a"). In 2002 Syed published the rules to Arimaa and announced a $10,000 prize, available through 2020, for the first computer program able to defeat a top-ranked human player in a match six games or longer. David Fotland, who is also the developer of Many Faces of Go, fielded the strongest Arimaa program in early 2004, only to see it crushed by Syed himself in the challenge match, eight wins to zero with no draws.
Author: Omar Syed ~ Publisher: Unpublished ~
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