On-line Preferansz and robot player implementations

Preferansz is the Hungarian version of the Preference card game. An on-line realization of this game is presented. The PrefiOnLine software system is designed to handle hundreds of parallel games without overload problems. The architecture of this system is briefly described. Some possibilities for creating robot players are discussed. Two different AI methods for controlling robot players are described. The first method uses a rule-based system. The second method is based on a graph search algorithm. It combines a classical approach with a Monte Carlo method and applies heuristics for search space reduction. Several experiments, comparisons and results are presented. Some conclusions and further research possibilities are also described.