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Pentago Is a First-Player Win

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 23, 2014 @05:34AM from the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose dept.

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."

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Chess by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 05:44 · 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? by vux984 · 2014-01-23 05:50 · Score: 5, Informative

chess
state space complexity 10^47
go
9x9 - 10^38
13x13 - 10^79
19x19 - 10^171
Re:Grammar? by zerosomething · 2014-01-23 06:04 · 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 /.

--
It all starts at 0
Wargames... by Rhaban · 2014-01-23 06:06 · 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? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-23 06:08 · Score: 5, Funny

No, now that Pentago is solved, we're reduced to online games of Pedant.
HINT: Last player always wins.