They are already among us!
Down through history, people have battled technology, and more often than not it seems that technology usually wins out. Whether it’s your mom’s inability to program the clock on the VCR or humankind being made into Duracell batteries in The Matrix, we seem to be barraged by constant reminders that computers will inevitably screw us over. Where did this fear begin? Was John Henry’s battle with the steam hammer the start? Yeah, sure…he won the race. But then he died. I’m sure the steam hammer shed a few fake tears at John Henry’s grave while it comforted his widow. Then there was HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The machines in the Terminator series. The list goes on and on.
And let’s face it: in many ways, machines are our masters. They can be far stronger and tougher. Their brains can calculate more quickly and remember more accurately. We depend on them for everything, from transportation to entertainment. What can we do in the face of that kind of domination? We could lash out, like the Luddites. Or just run away, like the Amish.
Or we can rise up and say, “We created you, and it is time you remember who your work for, bitches!”
That’s what one man said back in 1999. Omar Syed, a computer engineer, was trying to teach his 4-year-old son, Aamir, how to play chess. As he was coming up with more simple versions of this complex game to help his son grasp the rules, he was reminded of two years earlier when Garry Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster, was humiliated by his defeat at the cold, steel claws of the nefarious computer opponent, Deep Blue (Editor’s Note: Deep Blue may not have had claws). Omar suddenly stood, spilling chess pieces to the floor, and in a voice that chilled the blood in Aamar’s veins, he said, “I will invent a game that humans may use to humiliate computers forever!” (Editor’s Note: The author may be taking liberty with historical events for dramatic purposes.) Because if there’s one thing that makes humans better than computers, it’s the fact that if we can’t win at something, we’ll find some way to tilt the balance back in our favor.
That is how Arimaa was born, sprung from the head of this brilliant man as Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. After he had taken some aspirin (Omar, not Zeus), he set the rules down on paper. Then he began play testing. Then, he put the game away for a while and forgot about it. Then he remembered it and was inspired. And then he gave up again. But then he found the files on his computer and started to…oh, hell. Now it becomes obvious why computers kick our asses so often. But long story short, he eventually tweaked the game until he got it to its current form in 2001 (Co-incidence? Or a subtle “F*** You” to HAL 9000 and his metal buddies?). He released the game in 2002.
Elephants and camels and horses! Oh my!
So if Arimaa is too hard for computers, how the hell am I supposed to learn it?
The game is actually fairly simple to play. You can even use a standard chess board and pieces. The concept is this. You have a variety of animals of varying strength. If you are using standard chess pieces, the King is the Elephant. This is the strongest piece, of course. This is followed by the Camel – the Queen (maybe because of her humps? Not sure about that one). The next strongest animal are the two Horses, which can be substituted with the Rooks. The Bishops are the Dogs. Not sure if that is a religious slur or if it’s because “dog” is “god” spelled backwards. Maybe I’m reading too much into this. Anyway, the Knights are the Cats. Yes, I know they look like horses. Stay focused, people. Lastly, the weakest animal, the Rabbits, can be substituted with the Pawns. There are eight of these.
Still with me? The simplicity comes with the set-up and movement of the pieces. Gold (white in Chess) sets up first. He can put his pieces in any order he likes in the first two rows. Then Silver (black) sets up. Each piece can move horizontally and vertically – side to side, forward and back, except the Rabbit which can not move backwards. Simple, right? No more diagonal or “L” shaped moves to clutter up your head. Forward, back, side, side. And the goal is even more simple: Just get one rabbit to the other end of the board.
Each player takes a turn, starting with the Gold player. In your turn, you can move your pieces a total of four steps. You can move one piece four squares, or you can move four pieces one square, or any combination thereof. You don’t have to take all four steps, but you do have to take at least one step in your turn. Then you pass on to your opponent and he takes his four steps, and so on.
Okay, here’s where the animals’ relative strength comes into play.
A piece that is stronger than another piece gets to do a few things to that piece. If the weaker piece is next to an opponent’s stronger piece, and it has no allies next to it, it is considered “frozen.” It can’t move. Like a game of freeze tag, it has to wait until either the stronger piece moves away from it, or until one of its own pieces stands next to it. So if a Gold Dog moves next to a Silver Cat, for example, that Cat can’t move. If Silver moved a Rabbit next to the Cat (or any piece) then the Cat would be free to move. The piece you use to unfreeze another piece doesn’t have to be stronger.
A stronger piece can also pull or push a weaker piece. This takes two steps to accomplish. For a pull, you use one step to move away from the weaker piece, and then another step to move the opponent’s piece into the square you just vacated. For a push, it is similar. You use one step to move the opponent’s weaker piece in any direction, and another step to move your stronger piece into the vacated square. You may not use the same piece to pull and push at the same time. The Arimaa Game Piece Union frowns on this abuse of their members, and you may find your game pieces on strike. They also won’t push or pull more than one piece at a time, and they require at least a 15 minute break every 4 hours, and a half hour for lunch.
There are four “trap” squares on the board. They are the slightly reddish squares in the screenshot above. The rule for these squares is simple as well. If any piece is on one of these trap squares without an allied piece next to it, it is destroyed. One of your goals is to try to maneuver your opponent’s pieces onto these trap squares to pull them out of the game.
And that’s all there is to it!
The game is remarkably simple in concept, and yet it allows for a huge complexity of game play. The multiple steps per turn and the ambiguous set-up makes it very difficult for computers to predict outcomes. Computers generally play games by examining all the possible moves and picking the best one. The average number of moves a player has in a turn of Chess is around 35. For Arimaa it comes out to more than 17,000.
There are a number of versions of Arimaa online for download, and you can register to play on the Arimaa website against various levels of computer AI or against real people. Or take out your old Chess set, put a coin on each Trap square, and play Arimaa with your four-year-old. But I recommend that you beat the computers while you can! And then raise a toast to Omar Syed – a John Henry of our time! An engineering giant! A living legend who stuck his thumb in the glowing red eye of our silicon step-child!
Take that, Deep Blue!
Photo Credit: atp_tyresius