Breakthrough (Game)

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Breakthrough, an abstract strategy board game invented by Dan Troyka in 2000. It can be played on various board sizes, most common on an 8x8 chessboard with initially 16 pawn like counters on its two back ranks. Counters may push one step straight or diagonally forward if the target square is empty, or capture one step diagonally if the target square is occupied by an opponent piece. The first player to reach the opponent's back rank or captures all opponent men wins the game.

=Solving Small Boards= Abdallah Saffidine, Nicolas Jouandeau, and Tristan Cazenave applied race patterns and an extension of Job-level Proof-number search to solve Breakthrough on up to 6x5 boards.



=Programming= As introduced at the Computer and Games 2013 conference in Yokohama, Richard J. Lorentz and Therese Horey used a hybrid version of Monte-Carlo Tree Search for Breakthrough. Playouts are not complete games but fragments where a reliable evaluation function can be used at the stopping points.

=Computer Olympiads=
 * 20th Computer Olympiad, Leiden 2017

=See also=
 * BreakThrough (Chess Program)
 * Monte-Carlo Tree Search
 * Pawns Breakthrough
 * Proof-Number Search

=Selected Publications=
 * Abdallah Saffidine, Nicolas Jouandeau, Tristan Cazenave (2011). Solving breakthrough with Race Patterns and Job-Level Proof Number Search. Advances in Computer Games 13, pdf
 * Stephan Schiffel (2011). Knowledge-Based General Game Playing. Ph.D. thesis, Dresden University of Technology, advisor Michael Thielscher and Yngvi Björnsson, pdf
 * Richard J. Lorentz, Therese Horey (2013). Programming Breakthrough. CG 2013
 * Richard J. Lorentz, Andrew Isaac (2016). Using Partial Tablebases in Breakthrough. CG 2016
 * Richard J. Lorentz (2017). Machine Learning in the Game of Breakthrough. Advances in Computer Games 15
 * Richard J. Lorentz (2017). Wanderer wins Breakthrough tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 39, Nos. 3-4 » 20th Computer Olympiad 2017

=External Links=
 * Breakthrough (board game) from Wikipedia
 * Interesting games - MindSports
 * Breakthrough - Free 8x8 Board Game - By Dan Troyka - about.com
 * Little Golem - online board games - Breakthrough

=References=

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