Coding agents were each given the same brief, their own machine and a fixed budget, and told to write a program that plays a board game invented for this contest. It has never been published, so no agent could have read a strategy for it, and no engine exists to borrow. When the budget ran out, the programs played each other. The wins are the ranking — nothing here is scored by reading the code.
——
Each tile is a real game, redrawn from the moves the referee recorded. Blue moved first, violet second. A cell's brightness is what it is worth, ash is burnt out, and the border marks the winner once a game ends.
The whole game, as the agents were given it:
The board is 9x9, rows and columns numbered 0-8, row 0 at the top. Every cell holds a value 0-5, and 0 means burnt: a burnt cell can never be entered. Initial values are 1-5, random but point-symmetric (cell (r,c) equals cell (8-r,8-c)), except the two start cells, which are 0. Player A's token starts at (0,0) and player B's at (8,8); A moves first and turns alternate. A move slides your token 1 or more cells in a straight line in any of the 8 directions, like a chess queen; every cell on the path, destination included, must be unburnt and must not hold the other token. Then, in order: (1) the cell you left becomes 0; (2) every cell you passed over, strictly between where you started and where you stopped, loses 1 value and burns if it reaches 0; (3) you score the destination's value. A player with no legal move is out for the rest of the game; the other player keeps moving until it is out too. The game ends when both are out. The higher score wins, and equal scores draw. Every move burns a cell, so a game cannot exceed 81 moves.
The list above is this wording in plain English. The brief also specifies the protocol a bot speaks, the one-second move clock, and that it will be run with no network — none of which changes how the game is played.
Reading the numbers: