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Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

I agree, the Mancala backstory sounds quite strange and unbelievable. To me it looks like it's made up (maybe partly on some vague recollection of the author) to serve as an introduction for the rest of the article.

The behavior of AI programming winning by 1 point does exist in real life for Monte-Carlo based agents calculating winning probabilities. You can see it in computer go games.

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It's almost certainly based on the author's experience in Harvey Mudd's CS 151 (Artificial Intelligence) course, in which developing a Mancala AI is a standard project.

I believe Day 9 did indeed get his masters this year from Harvey Mudd. (original article was written 4 years ago)

Harvey Mudd doesn't have a masters program -- I'm pretty sure he graduated in 2008. I lived across the hall from him at one point. :)

Masters this year from USC, undergrad at Hervey Mudd.

Researchers from Berkeley developed a fairly good Starcraft AI engine that combined micro-management, pathing, and overally strategy to win the Starcraft AI competition: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/skynet-meets-the-...

Yup the strategies described are very primitive and explained quite vaguely. That was the first thing I noticed. You don't make AI to capture the maximum number of pieces and you don't make AI to get only 1 piece advantage. I may be wrong here as I dont know anything about Mancala.

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