History
The game was given wide dissemination and positive publicity by its inclusion in Sid Sackson's book A Gamut of Games (1969), but for many years no stable playing community developed to explore the strategy to any depth. Only starting in the 1990s has any deep understanding of the game evolved.
In the last few years, not only has the play of the best humans risen dramatically, but simultaneously excellent computer programs have emerged. The level of play is improving both among humans and computers, but for the present the strongest LOA-playing entity in the world is the program MIA. MIA took first place in the 8th Computer Olympiad (2003), 9th Computer Olympiad (2004) and 11th Computer Olympiad (2006).
The best human players are probably Jorge Gómez Arrausi and Gianfranco Buccoliero (winner of the largest loa tournament to date). Jorge has played competitive games against top computer programs, but has not been triumphant in recent matches.
Claude Soucie, the inventor of LOA, died just as his game was beginning to reach a critical mass of interest. Some of the finer points of the rules are just now being standardized, without the benefit of appeal to Soucie. In all situations which were discussed by Sackson, his presentation is now generally accepted as authoritative.
Lines of Action inspired Sid Sackson to develop another game, entitled Fields of Action.
Read more about this topic: Lines Of Action
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)