Modeling the game of Arimaa with Linguistic Geometry

Abstract

A computer defeated a chess world champion for the first time in 1997. This event inspired Omar Syed to develop the game of Arimaa. He intended to make it difficult to solve under present search approaches. Linguistic Geometry is a technique that offers a formal method based on the expertise of human chess masters, to make the development of complex heuristics easier. This article introduces a Linguistic Geometry based model for the game of Arimaa. It gives implementation for each of the essential components of Linguistic Geometry: trajectories, zones, translations and searches. A test case is given and it is used as input for a software implementation of the proposed model. The results given by the software are compared against the analysis made by a human player.