Mark Winands

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Mark Henricus Maria Winands, a Dutch computer scientist, games researcher and associate professor at Maastricht University. Along with I-Chen Wu and Tristan Cazenave, Mark is Editor-in-Chief of the ICGA Journal, and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games. He is author of various game playing programs, most notably his Lines of Action program MIA, successfully competing at ICGA tournaments. Mark researched on Proof-Number Search, and introduced Enhanced Forward Pruning, which applies Forward Pruning Techniques, like Null Move Pruning and Multi-Cut, not only at expected Cut-Nodes, but also at expected All-Nodes with slight modifications on a Principal Variation Search framework, and the Relative History Heuristic in 2004 at the Computers and Games 2004 Conference in Ramat-Gan, an improvement of Schaeffer's History Heuristic considering Dap Hartmann's Butterfly Heuristic.

=Mark's Programs=
 * Lines of Action program MIA, three times winner of the Computer Olympiad
 * Clobber program Mila
 * Draughts program Rocky
 * Surakarta program SIA, gold medal winner from the Amsterdam 2007 Computer Olympiad

=Selected Publications=

2000 ...
2001 2002 2003
 * Mark Winands (2000). Analysis and Implementation of Lines of Action. M.Sc. thesis. Universiteit Maastricht, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk (2000). Analysis and Implementation of Lines of Action. 5th Computer Olympiad Workshop, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2001). The Quad heuristic in Lines of Action. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, pdf
 * Mark Winands (2001). The CMG 6th Computer Olympiad and the Computer-Games Workshop. IKAT, Maastricht University, pdf » 6th Computer Olympiad
 * Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Winands (2001). YL wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 3 » 6th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk (2001). PN, PN2 and PN* in Lines of Action. 6th Computer Olympiad Workshop, pdf
 * Mark Winands (2002). The Seventh Computer Olympiad. IKAT, Maastricht University, pdf » 7th Computer Olympiad
 * Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Winands (2002). YL wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 » 7th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands, Levente Kocsis, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2002). Learning in Lines of Action. 7th Computer Olympiad Workshop
 * Mark Winands, Levente Kocsis, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2002). Temporal difference learning and the Neural MoveMap heuristic in the game of Lines of Action. GAME-ON 2002
 * Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2002). PDS-PN: A New Proof-Number Search Algorithm: Application to Lines of Action. CG 2002
 * Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk, Erik van der Werf (2003). Enhanced forward pruning. JCIS 2003
 * Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Johanna Hellemons (2003). The 8th Computer Olympiad. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 » 8th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2003). MIA IV wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 » 8th Computer Olympiad

2004
 * Mark Winands, Erik van der Werf, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk (2004). The Relative History Heuristic. CG 2004, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Johanna Hellemons (2004). The 9th Computer Olympiad. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 » 9th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2004). MIA 4++ wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 » 9th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2004). An Effective Two-Level Proof-Number Search Algorithm. Theoretical Computer Science. Vol. 313, No.3, pp. 511-525. ps
 * Mark Winands (2004). Informed Search in Complex Games. Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands. ISBN 90-5278-429-9. Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Received the 2004 ChessBase Best-Publication Award. pdf

2005 ...
2006 2007
 * Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk, Erik van der Werf (2005). Enhanced Forward Pruning. Information Sciences, Vol. 175, No. 4, pdf preprint
 * Erik van der Werf, Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk (2005). Learning to predict life and death from Go game records. Information Sciences, Vol. 175, No. 4
 * Jan Willemson, Mark Winands (2005). Mila wins Clobber tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3, pdf » 10th Computer Olympiad
 * Levente Kocsis, Csaba Szepesvári, Mark Winands (2005). RSPSA: Enhanced Parameter Optimization in Games. Advances in Computer Games 11, pdf
 * Mark Winands (2006). Pan wins Clobber tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 » 11th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2006). MIA 4.5 wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 » 11th Computer Olympiad
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands, Maurice Bergsma, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2007). Fanorona is a Draw. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, pdf
 * Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk, Mark Winands, Maarten Schadd (eds.) (2007). Computer Games Workshop 2007. Maastricht University, MICC Technical Report Series 07-06
 * Jahn-Takeshi Saito, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik (2007). Grouping Nodes for Monte-Carlo Tree Search. CGW 2007


 * Jaap van den Herik, Mark Winands, Johanna Hellemons (2007). The 12th Computer Olympiad. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 » 12th Computer Olympiad
 * Jaap van den Herik, Mark Winands, Johanna Hellemons (2007). The 12th Computer Olympiad (continued). ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3
 * Mark Winands (2007). SIA wins Surakarta tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 » 12th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2007). 8QP wins Amazons tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 » 12th Computer Olympiad

2008
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik, Maurice Bergsma (2008). Best Play in Fanorona Leads to Draw. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 369-387, pdf
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Huib Aldewereld (2008). Addressing NP-Complete Puzzles with Monte-Carlo Methods. In Volume 9: Proceedings of the AISB 2008 Symposium on Logic and the Simulation of Interaction and Reasoning, pages 55-61, Brighton, UK, 2008. The Society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour. pdf
 * Jaap van den Herik, Xinhe Xu, Zongmin Ma, Mark Winands (eds.) (2008). Computers and Games: 6th International Conference. CG 2008
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik, Guillaume Chaslot, Jos Uiterwijk (2008). Single-Player Monte-Carlo Tree Search. CG 2008, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson, Jahn-Takeshi Saito (2008). Monte-Carlo Tree Search Solver. CG 2008, pdf
 * Guillaume Chaslot, Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik (2008). Parallel Monte-Carlo Tree Search. CG 2008, pdf
 * Guillaume Chaslot, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk, Jaap van den Herik, Bruno Bouzy (2008) Progressive Strategies for Monte-Carlo Tree Search. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 4, No. 3. pp. 343-357.
 * Mark Winands and Yngvi Björnsson (2008). Enhanced Realization Probability Search. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 329-342.
 * Guillaume Chaslot, Mark Winands, István Szita, Jaap van den Herik. (2008). Cross-entropy for Monte-Carlo Tree Search. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3, pdf
 * Jaap van den Herik, Mark Winands, Johanna Hellemons (2008). The 13th International Computer-Games Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3 » 13th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2008). SIA wins Surakarta tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3 » 13th Computer Olympiad

2009
 * Jaap van den Herik, Mark Winands, Johanna Hellemons (2008). The 13th Computer Games Championship (part 2). ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 » 13th Computer Olympiad
 * Jaap van den Herik, Mark Winands, Johanna Hellemons (2009). The 13th Computer Games Championship (part 3). ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 » 13th Computer Olympiad
 * Mark Winands (2009). Many Faces of Go wins 9x9 and 19x19 Go tournaments. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 » 13th Computer Olympiad


 * Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson (2009). Evaluation Function Based Monte-Carlo LOA. pdf
 * Jahn-Takeshi Saito, Mark Winands, Jaap van den Herik (2009). Randomized Parallel Proof-Number Search. Advances in Computer Games 12, pdf
 * Erik van der Werf, Mark Winands (2009). Solving Go for Rectangular Boards. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2
 * Mark Winands (2009). MIA wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 » 14th Computer Olympiad
 * Pálmi Skowronski, Yngvi Björnsson,Mark Winands (2009). Automated Discovery of Search-Extension Features. Advances in Computer Games 12, pdf
 * Guillaume Chaslot, Jean-Baptiste Hoock, Julien Pérez, Arpad Rimmel, Olivier Teytaud, Mark Winands (2009). Meta Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Automatic Opening Book Generation. pdf
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands (2009). Quiescence Search for Stratego. BNAIC 2009, pdf
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk (2009). ChanceProbCut: Forward Pruning in Chance Nodes. in IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2009), pdf

2010 ...
2011 2012
 * Pim Nijssen, Mark Winands (2010). Enhancements for Multi-Player Monte-Carlo Tree Search. CG 2010, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Maarten Schadd (2010). Evaluation-Function Based Proof-Number Search. CG 2010, pdf
 * Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson, Jahn-Takeshi Saito (2010). Monte Carlo Tree Search in Lines of Action. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 2, No. 4
 * Mark Winands (2011). SIA wins Surakarta tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 » 15th Computer Olympiad
 * Maarten Schadd, Mark Winands (2011). Best Reply Search for Multiplayer Games. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 3, No. 1, pdf
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2011). Active Opening Book Application for Monte-Carlo Tree Search in 19x19 Go. BNAIC 2011, pdf
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2011). Time Management for Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Go. Advances in Computer Games 13
 * Jan Stankiewicz, Mark Winands, Jos Uiterwijk (2011). Monte-Carlo Tree Search Enhancements for Havannah. Advances in Computer Games 13
 * Pim Nijssen, Mark Winands (2011). Playout Search for Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Multi-Player Games. Advances in Computer Games 13
 * Pim Nijssen, Mark Winands (2012). Monte-Carlo Tree Search for the Hide-and-Seek Game Scotland Yard. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
 * Akihiro Kishimoto, Mark Winands, Martin Müller, Jahn-Takeshi Saito (2012). Game-Tree Search using Proof Numbers: The First Twenty Years. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3
 * Tristan Cazenave, Jean Méhat, Mark Winands (eds.) (2012). Computer Games Workshop at ECAI 2012. ECAI CGW 2012, pdf
 * Pim Nijssen, Mark Winands (2012). An Overview of Search Techniques in Multi-Player Games. ECAI CGW 2012
 * Niek Den Teuling, Mark Winands (2012). Monte-Carlo Tree Search for the Simultaneous Move Game Tron. ECAI CGW 2012pdf

2013 2014
 * Mark Winands, Tristan Cazenave (2012). Computer Games Workshop at ECAI 2012. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3 » ECAI CGW 2012
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2012). Nested Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Online Planning in Large MDPs. ECAI 2012, pdf
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2012). Beam Monte-Carlo Tree Search. CIG 2012, pdf
 * Pim Nijssen, Mark Winands (2013). Search Policies in Multi-Player Games. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1
 * Marc Lanctot, Abdallah Saffidine, Joel Veness, Christopher Archibald, Mark Winands (2013). Monte Carlo *-Minimax Search. IJCAI 2013
 * Mark Winands, Tristan Cazenave (2013). Computer Games Workshop at IJCAI 2013. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 » IJCAI 2013
 * Markus Esser, Michael Gras, Mark Winands, Maarten Schadd, Marc Lanctot (2013). Improving Best-Reply Search. CG 2013
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2013). Monte-Carlo Tree Search and minimax hybrids. CIG 2013, pdf
 * Tristan Cazenave, Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson (eds.) (2014). Computer Games. ECAI CGW 2014
 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2014). Monte-Carlo Tree Search and Minimax Hybrids with Heuristic Evaluation Functions. ECAI CGW 2014
 * Tom Pepels, Tristan Cazenave, Mark Winands, Marc Lanctot (2014). Minimizing Simple and Cumulative Regret in Monte-Carlo Tree Search. ECAI CGW 2014


 * Mark Winands, Tristan Cazenave (2014). ECAI Computer Games Workshop. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4 » ECAI CGW 2014
 * Marc Lanctot,Mark Winands, Tom Pepels, Nathan Sturtevant (2014). Monte Carlo Tree Search with Heuristic Evaluations using Implicit Minimax Backups. CIG 2014, arXiv:1406.0486

2015 ...

 * Hendrik Baier, Mark Winands (2016). Time Management for Monte Carlo Tree Search. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 8, No. 3, draft as pdf
 * Mark Winands, Tristan Cazenave (2017). IJCAI Computer Games Workshop 2015. ICGA Journal, Vol. 39, No. 1 » IJCAI 2015
 * Mark Winands, Richard J. Lorentz, Matej Guid (2017). Advances in Computer Games 2017. ICGA Journal, Vol. 39, Nos. 3-4 » Advances in Computer Games 15
 * Mark Winands (2018). The Magic of Monte-Carlo Tree Search. AI Factory, January 2018 » Monte-Carlo Tree Search

=External Links=
 * Mark Winands Homepage
 * Games and AI Group - Mark Winands
 * Mark Winands' ICGA Tournaments
 * Winands, Mark from computer-go.info

=References= Up one level