Thanks for providing the name, I've been trying to remember that story for a while now but my google-fu was weak and I couldn't recall any name involved (person, program or game).

I think you're refering to Dr. Douglas Lenat's Eurisko program. He applied it to the game Trillion Credit Squadron and won two years in a row with fleets the other participants scoffed at. The first year he/Eurisko won by creating a largely stationary fleet that could take enough damage to survive long enough to destroy its opponent. It exploited a damage rule in the competition. The damaged party got to select which component/subsystem was damaged. Eurisko constructed a fleet with many small, useless components which could be individually destroyed without impacting the effectiveness of the crafts themselves.

Edit: Reading more about it apparently the primary advantage was the shear number of craft. Essentially a fleet of kamikaze craft that could overwhelm the enemy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurisko