About the Contest

Students are invited to compete for the top prize, an Asus Eee PC, by programming their best Four-in-a-Row strategy in Java. The contest will run until June 1st, giving all you students a healthy submission period, so that it cannot be said to interfere with your studies. Every strategy will compete against every other and the final contest standings will be given in a league table. The strategy that tops the league table will be crowned the winner.

• Entrants are to develop a Four-in-a-Row strategy in Java.
• The contest was launched on March 10th 2009.
• The final submission deadline is June 1st 2009.
• Results will be announced in mid June at an awards event in London.
• The competition runs on platform developed by Dr James Heather as part of a University of Surrey SCEPTrE project.
• The contest is open to all full-time Students.
• Full-time students include: Sixth Form students; Undergraduate students; Masters students; PhD Students.
• The contest is structured to provide an opportunity for both a novice and a more experienced programmer to win the contest.
• There are two contest streams entitled 'Open' and 'Beginner'.
• Every strategy will compete against every other 25 times as 'player one' and 25 times as 'player two'.
• The final contest standings will be given in a league table.
• Two points will be awarded for each game won; one point for a game drawn; no points will be awarded for a loss.
• The strategy that tops the league table will be crowned the winner of the 'Open' contest.
• The non-recursive solution that ranks highest in the league table will be crowned the winner of the 'Beginner' contest.
• An Asus Eee PC will be awarded to the winner of the 'Open' contest.
• An Asus Eee PC will also be awarded to the winner of the 'Beginner' contest.
• The spec of Asus Eee PC to be awarded for both contests is as follows: ASUS Eee PC 1000H, Windows XP Home Preloaded, 10" Screen, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD.
• The contest will be run on a cluster owned by the University of Surrey.
• The platform is designed both to be secure and fair to each player.
• Modules cannot access the file system or network resources.
• Modules cannot save state or lean as they play.
• A CPU time limit is imposed on each turn.
• If the time limit expires before a player has registered a move, then the player forfeits the game.
• It is intended that the setBestMove method of the GameMetaData class should be used so that the next chosen move is updated many times before the time limit expires and the most recently calculated best move is used.