Strategy research based on chess shapes for Tibetan JIU computer game

摘要

JIU is a variant of traditional Tibetan chess which is mainly played in Tibetan Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Ngawa, China. The JIU game process is divided into two sequential stages: preparation and battle. The layout of stones during the preparation stage strongly influences gameplay in the battle stage. Compared with Go, computer game research on JIU is almost non-existent. We collected data for 300 JIU games recorded in Tibetan Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Ngawa. By analyzing the data, several important strategic shapes were extracted: triangles, trinities, diagonals and squares. A chess-shape pattern-matching method based on matrices was developed to recognize these shapes. Offensive and defensive strategies based on these shapes were proposed for the preparation stage, being ranked in terms of priority. Moving and capturing strategies based on these shapes were proposed for the battle stage. Human players of various skill levels were invited to play against the software, applying the proposed strategies, to evaluate its performance. The win rates of the software were 2%, 25% and 60%, against top, intermediate, and beginner players. These results demonstrate that the JIU game software using the proposed strategy performs slightly above the beginner level.