Arimaa Part 2

Chess is an age-old game, so it arrives as a digital immigrant into our modern era, but Arimaa is something new, an arena built precisely to give every seeming advantage back to 'the people'. Games are hosted on a dedicated server for Arimaa competition which is accessed by both humans and their bots. Omar Syed maintains the server and continues to manage events relating to his creation, including a cash prize of over $10,000 to the maker of the first Challenge-winning AI.

Different programs with names like Jumbo and Clueless competed to win the 2015 computer championship. When the one called Sharp prevailed, it then faced a panel of three strong human players who were winners of a separate contest. Not since the founding of the annual tournament in 2004 had the humans ever lost the final challenge. Yet on April 18th, it was Sharp that won 7-2.

At least it ranks as a singular human achievement. Sharp was not built by a secret team of corporate engineers with vast resources a la IBM's Deep Blue, but instead was the result of a multi-year effort by the programmer David Wu, a Harvard graduate whose senior thesis was titled “Move Ranking and Evaluation in the Game of Arimaa.”

However, on a public forum, Wu had engaged in a side bet with one of Sharp’s human challengers. To most, the relatively small bet looked like a way to juice up their friendly rivalry. That is still how people view it, but when Syed was made aware of the bet, he invalidated the tournament results on the grounds that it was “influenced in ways that were not intended.”

Although the breakthrough victory by an AI appeared to have happened, it might otherwise have been saddled with a question mark or an asterisk, so Sharp will have to wait for its accolades. On account of this technicality, humans remain undefeated. The Arimaa Challenge will continue next year in its thirteenth annual installment. The question is, to humans, will we up our game in 2016, or is defeat now inevitable?