Symmetries and Search in Trick-Taking Card Games
Timothy Furtak · ERA: Education and Research Archive (University of Alberta) · 2013
In this dissertation we consider the problem of cardplay move evaluation in the context of trick-taking card games, specifically the German card game Skat, and to a lesser extent Contract Bridge. To this end we construct symmetry-based search extensions for efficiently solving perfect information game states, for use in a Monte Carlo-based high-performance computer Skat player. We extend these symmetries to construct precomputed endgame lookup tables, reducing search time substantially. Finally, we show that recursive rollout-based move selection techniques can achieve superior performance in Skat and a broad class of parameterized games, with respect to both tournament performance and game-theoretic exploitability.