@inproceedings{d4325bf754754e13988e871f35b922e6,
title = "Implementation of Sprouts: A Graph Drawing Game",
abstract = "Sprouts is a two-player pencil-and-paper game invented by John Conway and Michael Paterson in 1967. In the game, the players take turns in joining dots by curves according to simple rules, until one player cannot make a move. The game of Sprouts is very popular and simple-looking, so it may come as a surprise that there are essentially no AI Sprouts players available. This lack of computer opponents is caused by the fact that the game hides a surprisingly high combinatorial complexity and implementing it involves fascinating programming challenges. We overcome all the implementation barriers and create the first user-friendly Sprouts application with a strong artificial intelligence after more than 50 years of the existence of the game. In particular, we combine results from the theory of nimbers with new methods based on Delaunay triangulations and crossing-preserving force-directed algorithms to develop an AI Sprouts player which plays a perfect game on up to 11 spots.",
keywords = "Combinatorial game, Graph drawing, Nimbers, Sprouts",
author = "Tom{\'a}{\v s} {\v C}{\'i}{\v z}ek and Martin Balko",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.; 29th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization, GD 2021 ; Conference date: 14-09-2021 Through 17-09-2021",
year = "2021",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-030-92931-2_28",
language = "English",
isbn = "9783030929305",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH",
pages = "391--405",
editor = "Purchase, {Helen C.} and Ignaz Rutter",
booktitle = "Graph Drawing and Network Visualization - 29th International Symposium, GD 2021, Revised Selected Papers",
address = "Germany",
}