chaated: Thank you, chaated. That helped.

I ended up assigning a Go-Moku project, instead, just to make it a little simpler. But I think the kids will have fun. Thad, you can enroll next year. ;)

Hi pente players,

I teach a high school programming class part-time, and for an upcoming class project I am considering a pente game. The students already have a GUI framework provided for them that handles images in a grid fairly well (see http://www.horstmann.com/gridworld). In writing their game, I would like to have the students implement a simple AI to play against.

I could brush up on general turn-based strategy algorithms, and then apply them to pente to write the project demo. But frankly, I can only spend so much time on my part-time job, so I don't have the time to try several different approaches before settling on a decent one that isn't too much coding for my students to handle.

So, can anyone point me to any resources for this effort? I'm looking for outlines for existing AI algorithms that are known to work reasonably well without massive coding. Or even the source code to an AI which I can pare down for my students (Like Mark Mammel's AI). Or any other pointers.

Thanks!
tarcellius

Are you interested in a live, across-the-board, pente tournament? A handful of players well-
connected in the online pente community are putting together a live pente tournament sometime in
2008. The orgnanizers are asking people to answer a few questions in an online poll to better
understand where and when the tournament would be the biggest success. Help us out! Visit the
following site to submit your feedback:

http://pente.homestead.com/biography.html

Sign the guestbook while you are there so we have some idea who has voted in the survey. Feel
free to browse the site while you are there (not much to it, the poll is what's important right
now) and check back later for results. Further announcements will be made here and on other sites
when details are available.

Some legwork for this tournament has already been done, and we're confident that there is
sufficient interest to have a really exciting tournament with top-level play and a gathering of
players from all over the internet. Stay tuned!

I'm a new member still poking around when I have extra time. Just found this discussion board, and through it the whole "team pente" thing. Sounds like fun! In fact, the idea of joining one of these fellowships is my motivation to upgrade my membership now rather than waiting.

After I do that, if anyone can use me on a team I'm happy to join. I trust I will figure out the confusion of these "fellowships" in due time. I swear I'm a decent pente player even though I have no ranking here.