General Game Playing

GGP is an interesting application in its own right. It is intellectually engaging and more than a little fun. But it is much more than that. It provides a theoretical framework for modeling discrete dynamic systems and defining rationality in a way that takes into account problem representation and complexities like incompleteness of information and resource bounds. It has practical applications in areas where these features are important, e.g., in business and law. More fundamentally, it raises questions about the nature of intelligence and serves as a laboratory in which to evaluate competing approaches to artificial intelligence.

This book is an elementary introduction to General Game Playing (GGP). (1) It presents the theory of General Game Playing and leading GGP technologies. (2) It shows how to create GGP programs capable of competing against other programs and humans. (3) It offers a glimpse of some of the real-world applications of General Game Playing.

Table of Contents: Preface / Introduction / Game Description / Game Management / Game Playing / Small Single-Player Games / Small Multiple-Player Games / Heuristic Search / Probabilistic Search / Propositional Nets / General Game Playing With Propnets / Factoring / Discovery of Heuristics / Logic / Analyzing Games with Logic / Solving Single-Player Games with Logic / Discovering Heuristics with Logic / Games with Incomplete Information / Games with Historical Constraints / Incomplete Game Descriptions / Advanced General Game Playing / Authors' Biographies