In January 2021, a database called “48Stones”, was built with the result of each possible move of all positions found in the Oware Abapa game. One of the benefits of such database is to put to the test all the best software applications, while confirming the resolution of the game.
Among the top-3 are the historical 25-year old Awale program from the Guillion brothers (France), the Awale Online mobile / desktop program from Ghislain Pellegrin (France) and the Aalina Artificial Intelligence engine from Joan Sala (Spain). 2 games were played with each program against the 48Stones database, alternating the starting players. The games are published in the website: http://48stones.com/research-games-benchmark/
Awale Online played 25 perfect moves, from the beginning of the game. That was the longest series of perfect plays for an opening. Meanwhile, the Aalina Artificial Intelligence engine played almost perfectly a whole game, with only 1 suboptimal move, resulting in a 23-25 score!
Optimising an AI engine to reach perfection is an art: “know too little and play like a monkey, know too much and play like a machine”. The other benefit of such database is to allow collaboration with software engineers, like Joan, sharing the same mission to share knowledge, learn and improve the Oware Abapa playbooks. If you want to contribute, please contact research@48stones.com or admin@oware.org