Impressions Of Week 7

During week 7 we learned more about assignment 2. Assignment 2 continues the game-playing framework of assignment 1. It adds a new game and a new strategy.

The new game is Tippy, a variation of Tic Tac Toe. In this variation instead of creating a line, you create a "Z" shape with "X"s or "O"s. In Tic Tac Toe if you play perfectly the game will always end up a tie. However, in Tippy if you go first you are guaranteed to win if you play perfectly and if you go second and your opponent plays perfectly you are guaranteed to lose. In my opinion, this means that it is really easy to test if you made a strong strategy for the game. Because if the strategy loses once when it goes first, it means that it is flawed.

We also learned about the minimax strategy. It is a strong strategy that assumes that both players are rational and have full information about the current game. It looks at the disadvantages of each possible move and selects the one with best outcome.

Finally we learned about rough_outcome. It makes an educated guess at the score without looking ahead of possible future moves. So it checks if you can win in the next move, if your opponent can win in the next move, or neither of the above.