World
Game
Of
Sprouts
Association

AuntBeast

Two new personalities have entered our segment of the sprouts world. One is a software developer and amateur mathematician named Josh Purinton. The other is his formidable creation, AuntBeast, a computer program patterned on the program described by Applegate, Jacobson, and Sleator. AuntBeast has begun to play casual games with WGOSA's human players and has already scored some surprising service victories, including:

8+ (AuntBeast* Khorkov) 1(9)2 1(10)1[3-4] 3(11)10 3(12)11 2(13)9 5(14)5[6-8] 2(15@14)13 5(16@6)14 4(17)12 6(18)7 7(19)7[16] 8(20)18 19(21)20[8] I

8+ (AuntBeast* - Khorkov) 1(9)2 1(10)1[3-4] 3(11)10 5(12)5[6-8] 2(13)2 I

8+ (AuntBeast* - Peltier) 1(9)2 1(10)1[2,3] 4(11)5 4(12)4[5,10] 11(13)12[10] 5(14)13 I

8+ (AuntBeast* - Purvis) 1(9)2 1(10)1[3,4] 3(11)10 2(12)9 4(13)3 4(14)3 11(15)13 5(16)5[6] 2(17@7)12 I

8+ (AuntBeast* - Purvis) 1(9)2 1(10)1[3,4] 3(11)10 2(12)9 3(13)4 5(14)5[6-8] 2(15@5)12 5(16)6 6(17)14 I

In the early action Roman Khorkov, who says of AuntBeast, "For me, there was never a stronger contender," also mounted some successful defenses:

8+ (AuntBeast* - Khorkov) 1(9)2 1(10)1[3-4] 5(11)10 9(12)11[2] II

8+ (AuntBeast* - Khorkov) 8+ 1(9)2 1(10)1[3-4] 2(11)9 10(12)11[5-6] II

11+ (Khorkov - AuntBeast*) 1(12)1[2-6] 1(13)12[7-8] 2(14)2[3-4] 8(15)13 8(16)8[7] 5(17)6 5(18)6 6(19@2)17 5(20)18 3(21)4 3(22)4 11(23)11 11(24)23[9] 4(25@2)21 3(26)22 I

Josh tells us that AuntBeast attempts to calculate all the way down and is capable of playing flawlessly in many positions. In games that start with 13 spots or fewer she is capable of playing the winning side perfectly, and puts up tough resistance in lost positions by trying to give her opponent the most chances possible to go wrong.

Josh, who has been playing sprouts since 1990, writes:

"Reading about Roman Khorkov's sweeping victories inspired me to write the program. I had a hunch that the game was more complicated than people thought, so I decided write a program to confirm this.

"I don't believe an unassisted human will ever be able to compete with a computer program at sprouts."

AuntBeast is named after a character in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

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