Challenge History
| Year | Prize | Challenger / Developer | Human Defender (Human Rank) | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | $10,000 | Bomb / David Fotland |
Omar Syed (1) | 0–8 | Syed gave a rabbit handicap in the last game and won. |
| 2005 | $10,000 | Bomb / David Fotland |
Frank Heinemann (5) | 1–7 | No handicap games |
| 2006 | $17,500 | Bomb / David Fotland |
Karl Juhnke (1) Greg Magne (2) Paul Mertens (5) |
0–3 0–3 1–2 |
Mertens gave a camel handicap in his last game and lost. |
| 2007 | $17,100 | Bomb / David Fotland |
Karl Juhnke (1) Omar Syed (9) Brendan M (12) N Siddiqui (23) |
0–3 0–3 0–2 1–0 |
Juhnke gave handicaps of a dog, a horse, and a camel respectively, and won all three. Syed gave a cat handicap in his last game and won. Siddiqui substituted for Brendan's third game. |
| 2008 | $17,000 | Bomb / David Fotland |
Jean Daligault (2) Greg Magne (3) Mark Mistretta (20) Omar Syed (24) |
0–3 0–3 0–1 0–2 |
No handicap games. Syed substituted for Mistretta's final two games. |
| 2009 | $16,500 | Clueless / Jeff Bacher |
Jean Daligault (1) Karl Juhnke (2) Jan Macura (14) Omar Syed (18) |
0–2 1–2 1–2 0–1 |
Juhnke gave a dog handicap in his second game and lost. Daligault gave a horse handicap in his last game and won. Syed substituted for Daligault's first game. |
| 2010 | $16,250 | Marwin / Mattias Hultgren |
Greg Magne (3) Louis-Daniel Scott (10) Patrick Dudek (23) |
0–3 1–2 2–1 |
Scott gave a dog handicap in his second game and lost. |
| 2011 | $11,000 | Marwin / Mattias Hultgren |
Karl Juhnke (3) Gregory Clark (7) Toby Hudson (14) |
1–2 0–3 0–3 |
Juhnke gave a cat handicap in his last game and lost. |
| 2012 | $11,150 | Briareus / Ricardo Barreira |
Jean Daligault (1) "hanzack" (2) Eric Momsen (5) |
0-3 0-3 3-0 |
Hanzack gave a cat handicap in his last game and won. |
The Arimaa Challenge has been held nine times so far. Prior to the third match, Syed changed the format to require the software to win two out of three games against each of three players, to reduce the psychological pressure on individual volunteer defenders. Also Syed called for outside sponsorship of the Arimaa Challenge to build a bigger prize fund.
In the first five challenge cycles, David Fotland, renowned for his program Many Faces of Go, won the Arimaa Computer Championship and the right to play for the prize money, only to see his program beaten decisively each year. In 2009 Fotland's program was surpassed by several new programs in the same year, the strongest of which was Clueless by Jeff Bacher. Humanity's margin of dominance over computers appeared to widen each year from 2004 to 2008 as the best human players improved, but the 2009 Arimaa Challenge was more competitive. Clueless became the first bot to win two games of a Challenge match.
In 2010, Mattias Hultgren's bot Marwin edged out Clueless in the computer championship. In the Challenge match Marwin became the first bot to win two out of three games against a single human defender, and also the first bot to win three of the nine games overall. In 2011, however, Marwin won only one of the nine games, and that one having received a material handicap. In 2012 a new challenger, Briareus, became the first program to defeat a top-ten player, sweeping all three games from the fifth-ranked human.
The material handicaps given in the Challenge games can be roughly equated to chess handicaps as a proportion of the total material on the board in each game. Arimaa handicaps of rabbit, dog, horse, and camel are roughly equivalent to chess handicaps of pawn, two pawns, knight, and rook respectively.
Read more about this topic: Arimaa
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