![]() According to the authors of the research paper, Boyd and Hirunthanakorn, the Minimax algorithm is an algorithm that uses game theory, a topic we’ve learned about in ECON 2040. The most interesting step taken, also the most relevant regarding what we’ve learned in this course, is the utilization of the Minimax algorithm for building an AI program that determines and plays the most advantageous move at each turn. In the study, several steps were taken to understand the game intuitively and search for an optimal strategy. Image of Nine Men’s Morris Board with Twenty-Four Spaces. ![]() A player wins the game when the opponent has less than three pieces left on the board or cannot move any pieces (The Rules of Merels or Nine Men’s Morris, ). Once all pieces have been placed on the board, each player will take turns to move one of their on-the-board pieces to a different space in an attempt to achieve a mill. When a player achieves a mill, they are to steal and remove any one of the opponent’s pieces on the board that is not part of the mill (Note: a mill can only be a vertical or horizontal row). Player “white” always moves first, and the players start taking turns placing one of their nine pieces onto an open space on the board the objective here is to achieve a “mill”, which is a term for a connected row of three pieces (The Rules of Merels or Nine Men’s Morris, ). ![]() The Nine Men’s Morris game involves a board with twenty-four spaces (depicted as “dots” or intersections on the board as seen below), and each player is given nine pieces each to place on the board (Boyd & Hirunthanakorn 2). In 2012, a study was done by Martin Boyd and Christopher Hirunthanakorn on the game of Nine Men’s Morris – a board game played between two players – in order to find an optimal strategy that could ideally guarantee a win or a draw. You can learn more about the History of Morris from The Online Guide to Traditional Games.Game Theory Application to Nine Men’s Morris The game is actually mentioned in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Act 2, Scene 2 - "The Nine Mens Morris is filled up with mud" which must have been a common problem for the primitive boards when it rained! ![]() It was also popular in many taverns with boards marked with chalk on a table. The old English game used to be played with black and white pebbles on a board that was dug into village greens using a trowel. In Europe the game's popularity peaked during the Fourteenth Century. Boards have also been found across Europe in such places as the first city of Troy, within a Bronze age burial site in Ireland and at the Acropolis in Athens. Other boards have been discovered in Ceylon, carved during the reign of Mahadithika Maha-Naga (9-21AD). The game is most likely an evolution of the simpler Three Mens Morris and primitive board patterns have been found dating back to as early as 1440BC, cut into the temple at Kurna, Egypt. Nine Mens Morris is another contender for the prize of 'Oldest game in the world' and is known by a number of different names in England - Nine Mens Morris or Morelles or Merrills or Merels or Mill or just plain Morris.
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