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Connect6 on a large board ¹

Connect6, Connect(m,n,6,2,1)
a two-player abstract strategy board game of the k-in-a-row family similar to Gomoku, introduced in 2003 by I-Chen Wu and presented at Advances in Computer Games 11 in 2005. Black and White alternately place two stones of their own colour on empty intersections of a Go-like board, except that Black (the first player) places one stone only for the first move ¹. The one who gets six or more stones in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) first wins the game. Most often, Connect6 is played on a 19x19 Go board, proposed for professional players is a 59x59 board ². Since 2006, Connect6 is played regularely by computers at the Computer Olympiad organized by the ICGA ³. Search algorithms used are Alpha-Beta / MTD(f) along with VCF search (Victory by Continuous Four) to find a path to win in the endgame ⁴, and Monte-Carlo Tree Search, UCT, as well as Proof-Number Search also in conjunction with the novel relevance-zone-oriented proof (RZOP) search used to solve various openings, such as the Mickey Mouse opening ⁵.

Selected Programs

• Bitstronger aka Cloudict by Liang Li, Hao Cui, Ruijian Wang, Siran Lin
• Kavalan by Jung-Kuei Yang, Shi-Jim Yen
• MeinStein by Theo van der Storm, Jan Krabbenbos
• MoreThenFive by Jiajia Guo, Xiaomeng Yang, Liang Yunzhao, Jianbo Zhao
• NCTU6 by I-Chen Wu, Hsiu-Chen Chang
• X6 by Sih-Yuan Liou, Shi-Jim Yen

GUI

• ConnectMore by Liang Li written in Python 3 - for Cloudict and more ... ⁶

Computer Olympiads

• 11th Computer Olympiad, Turin 2006
• 12th Computer Olympiad, Amsterdam 2007
• 13th Computer Olympiad, Beijing 2008
• 14th Computer Olympiad, Pamplona 2009
• 15th Computer Olympiad, Kanazawa 2010
• 16th Computer Olympiad, Tilburg 2011
• 17th Computer Olympiad, Yokohama 2013

See also

• Connect Four
• Gomoku
• Renju

Selected Publications

2005 ...

• I-Chen Wu, Dei-Yen Huang (2005). A New Family of k -in-a-Row Games. Advances in Computer Games 11, pdf
• I-Chen Wu, Dei-Yen Huang, Hsiu-Chen Chang (2005). Connect6. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4, pdf
• I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (2006). NCTU6 wins Connect6 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 » 11th Computer Olympiad
• I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (2007). X6 wins Connect6 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 » 12th Computer Olympiad
• I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (2008). NCTU6-Lite wins Connect6 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 » 13th Computer Olympiad

2009

• Sheng-Hao Chiang, I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (2009). On Drawn K-In-A-Row Games. Advances in Computer Games 12
• Changming Xu, Zongmin Ma, Junjie Tao, Xinhe Xu (2009). Enhancements of Proof Number Search in Connect6. IEEE Control and Decision Conference
• Changming Xu, Zongmin Ma, Xinhe Xu (2009). A method to construct knowledge table-base in k-in-a-row games. SAC 2009
• Ping-Hung Lin, I-Chen Wu, Shun-Chin Hsu (2009). Bit wins Connect6 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 » 14th Computer Olympiad
• Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang (2009). The Bitboard Design and Bitwise Computing in Connect Six. 14th Game Programming Workshop

2010 ...

• Ping-Hung Lin (2010). Relevance-Zone-Oriented Proof Search for Connect6. Ph.D. thesis
• I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (2010). Relevance-Zone-Oriented Proof Search for Connect6. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 2, No. 3
• I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin, Shi-Jim Yen (2010). MoreThenFive wins the Connect-6 Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 33, No. 3 » 15th Computer Olympiad
• I-Chen Wu, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Ping-Hung Lin, Der-Johng Sun, Yi-Chih Chan, Bo-Ting Chen (2010). Job-Level Proof-Number Search for Connect6. CG 2010
• Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang (2010). Searching for Stage Proof Number in Connect6. TAAI 2010

2011

• Sheng-Hao Chiang, I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (2011). Drawn K-In-A-Row Games. Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 412
• I-Chen Wu, Hsin-Ti Tsai, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Yi-Shan Lin, Chieh-Min Chang, Ping-Hung Lin (2011). Temporal Difference Learning for Connect6. Advances in Computer Games 13
• Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang (2011). Two-Stage Monte Carlo Tree Search for Connect6. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 3

2012

• Liang Li, Hong Liu, Peiyu Liu, Taoying Liu, Wei Li, Hao Wang (2012). A Node-based Parallel Game Tree Algorithm Using GPUs. CLUSTER 2012, pdf
• Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang, Kuo-Yuan Kao, Tai-Ning Yang (2012). Bitboard Knowledge Base System and Elegant Search Architectures for Connect6. Knowledge-Based Systems, Vol. 34

2013

• I-Chen Wu, Hao-Hua Kang, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Ping-Hung Lin, Ting-Han Wei, Chieh-Min Chang, Ting-Fu Liao (2013). Dependency-Based Search for Connect6. CG 2013
• Ting-Han Wei, Wen-Jie Tseng, I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (2013). MOBILE 6 Wins Connect6 Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 » 17th Computer Olympiad
• Jung-Kuei Yang, Ping-Jung Tseng (2013). Bitboard Connection Code Design for Connect6. TAAI 2013

2014

• Ting-Han Wei, I-Chen Wu, Chao-Chin Liang, Bing-Tsung Chiang, Wen-Jie Tseng, Shi-Jim Yen, Chang-Shing Lee (2014). Job-Level Algorithms for Connect6 Opening Position Analysis. ECAI CGW 2014

2015 ...

• Ting-Han Wei, I-Chen Wu, Chao-Chin Liang, Bing-Tsung Chiang, Wen-Jie Tseng, Shi-Jim Yen, Chang-Shing Lee (2015). Job-Level Algorithms for Connect6 Opening Book Construction. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3
• Liang Li, Hong Liu, Hao Wang, Taoying Liu, Wei Li (2015). A Parallel Algorithm for Game Tree Search Using GPGPU. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 26, No. 8
• Jung-Kuei Yang (2016). Building Connect6 opening by using the Monte Carlo tree search. ICACI 2016
• Jung-Kuei Yang, Shi-Jim Yen (2019). Kavalan wins Connect6 tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1 » 21st Computer Olympiad 2018

2020 ...

• Jung-Kuei Yang, Shi-Jim Yen (2020). The Connect6 tournament of the 2019 Computer Olympiad. ICGA Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1 » 22nd Computer Olympiad

External Links

• Connect6 from Wikipedia
• Introduction to Connect6
• Connect6 (ICGA Tournaments)
• m,n,k-game from Wikipedia

References