Pentago Is a First-Player Win 136
First time accepted submitter jwpeterson writes "Like chess and go, pentago is a two player, deterministic, perfect knowledge, zero sum game: there is no random or hidden state, and the goal of the two players is to make the other player lose (or at least tie). Unlike chess and go, pentago is small enough for a computer to play perfectly: with symmetries removed, there are a mere 3,009,081,623,421,558 (3e15) possible positions. Thus, with the help of several hours on 98304 threads of Edison, a Cray supercomputer at NERSC, pentago is now strongly solved. 'Strongly' means that perfect play is efficiently computable for any position. For example, the first player wins."
Chess (Score:5, Funny)
After playing in chess tournaments for 20 years, I have strongly solved that chess is a forced win for any player facing me.
Re:Comparison to Chess? (Score:2, Funny)
woman
state space complexity: 10^191
23 out of 28 days
three orders of magnitude added 5 out of 28 days
Re:Grammar? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't the editors write a headline that meets the basic rules of grammar? How about "In the game of Pentago the first player can always win", or "Pentago is strongly solved".
No cause with out those grammar mistakes their would be 30 pricent fuer com-mints on /.
Re:Comparison to Chess? (Score:3, Funny)
keep it classy man. ha ha, women. double ha ha, menses. and yet you're still single, how can that be?
Wargames... (Score:5, Funny)
If Matthew Broderick had played pentago, the computer would have concluded the first country launching a nuclear missile always wins the war.
Il came close
Re:Grammar? (Score:5, Funny)
No, now that Pentago is solved, we're reduced to online games of Pedant.
HINT: Last player always wins.
Re:A rough approx. is 10^60 moves (Score:4, Funny)
Plus, where would you put the chess board?