The authors are concerned with a card game called Daihinmin (Extreme Needy), which is a multi-player imperfect information game. Using Marvin Minsky's “Society of Mind” theory, they attempt to model the workings of the minds of game players. The UEC Computer Daihinmin Competitions (UECda) have been held at the University of Electro-Communications since 2006, to bring together competitive client programs that correspond to players of Daihinmin, and contest their strengths. In this paper, the authors extract the behavior of client programs from actual competition records of the computer Daihinmin, and propose a method of building a system that determines the parameters of Daihinmin agencies by machine learning.
Top2. Daihinmin
Daihinmin (Extreme Needy) is a card game which originated in Japan and which is also called Daifugo (Grand Millionaire). Daihinmin uses a pack of 53 cards, 13 cards per suit plus one Joker, and is normally played by 2 to 5 players. At the start of a round of the game, the same amount of cards is dealt to each of the players. The players take it in turn to play a card or cards from their hands, and the person who plays all his cards quickest wins, but the round continues until all the players’ titles are determined.
Each time a round ends, the players are given the titles of “Daifugo (the grand millionaire)”, “Fugo (the millionaire)”, “Heimin (the commoner)”, “Hinmin (the needy)”, and “Daihinmin (the extreme needy)” (when five people are playing), in the order in which they finished that round. Immediately after the initial deal of the next round, cards are exchanged as follows:
- 1.
The daihinmin hands over the two strongest cards in his hand to the daifugo who returns any two worthless cards to the daihinmin; and
- 2.
The hinmin hands over the strongest card in his hand to the fugo who returns any one worthless card to the hinmin.
After the exchange of cards, the round of the game repeats as described above.
In Daihinmin, card strengths are determined by their face values, usually in the sequence: 2, A, K, Q, J, .., 5, 4, 3. The Joker is used as a wild card that can replace any other card, and is the strongest card when played alone, with some exceptions.
When a player places a number of cards at a time, they must fulfill a “role”. Any one card in his hand has the role of “single”. The role played by a number of cards of the same face value is called a “pair” (or “group”) and that of a straight of three or more cards of the same suit is called a “sequence”.