Adversarial search

Lecture-part-4
• Adversarial search is a search, where we
examine the problem which arises when we
try to plan ahead of the world and other
agents are planning against us.
• In previous topics, we have studied the search strategies which are only
associated with a single agent that aims to find the solution which often
expressed in the form of a sequence of actions.
• But, there might be some situations where more than one agent is searching for
the solution in the same search space, and this situation usually occurs in game
playing.
• The environment with more than one agent is termed as multi-agent
environment, in which each agent is an opponent of other agent and playing
against each other. Each agent needs to consider the action of other agent and
effect of that action on their performance.
• So, Searches in which two or more players with conflicting goals are trying to
explore the same search space for the solution, are called adversarial searches,
often known as Games.
• Games are modeled as a Search problem and heuristic evaluation function, and
these are the two main factors which help to model and solve games in AI.
Types of Games in AI:
• Perfect information: A game with the perfect information is that in which agents
can look into the complete board. Agents have all the information about the game,
and they can see each other moves also. Examples are Chess, Checkers, Go, etc.
• Imperfect information: If in a game agents do not have all information about the
game and not aware with what's going on, such type of games are called the game
with imperfect information, such as tic-tac-toe, Battleship, blind, Bridge, etc.
• Deterministic games: Deterministic games are those games which follow a strict
pattern and set of rules for the games, and there is no randomness associated with
them. Examples are chess, Checkers, Go, tic-tac-toe, etc.
• Non-deterministic games: Non-deterministic are those games which have various
unpredictable events and has a factor of chance or luck. This factor of chance or
luck is introduced by either dice or cards. These are random, and each action
response is not fixed. Such games are also called as stochastic games.
Example: Backgammon, Monopoly, Poker, etc.
• Note: In this topic, we will discuss
deterministic games, fully observable
environment, zero-sum, and where each
agent acts alternatively.
 Zero-Sum Game

• Zero-sum games are adversarial search which involves

pure competition.
• In Zero-sum game each agent's gain or loss of utility is
exactly balanced by the losses or gains of utility of
another agent.
• One player of the game try to maximize one single
value, while other player tries to minimize it.
• Each move by one player in the game is called as ply.
• Chess and tic-tac-toe are examples of a Zero-sum
game.
 Zero-sum game: Embedded thinking
• The Zero-sum game involved embedded thinking in
which one agent or player is trying to figure out:
• What to do.
• How to decide the move
• Needs to think about his opponent as well
• The opponent also thinks what to do
• Each of the players is trying to find out the response
of his opponent to their actions. This requires
embedded thinking or backward reasoning to solve
the game problems in AI.
 A game can be defined as a type of search in AI which
can be formalized of the following elements:

• Initial state: It specifies how the game is set up at the start.

• Player(s): It specifies which player has moved in the state space.
• Action(s): It returns the set of legal moves in state space.
• Result(s, a): It is the transition model, which specifies the result of
moves in the state space.
• Terminal-Test(s): Terminal test is true if the game is over, else it is
false at any case. The state where the game ends is called terminal
states.
• Utility(s, p): A utility function gives the final numeric value for a game
that ends in terminal states s for player p. It is also called payoff
function. For Chess, the outcomes are a win, loss, or draw and its
payoff values are +1, 0, ½. And for tic-tac-toe, utility values are +1, -1,
and 0.
 Game tree:
• A game tree is a tree where nodes of the tree are the game
states and Edges of the tree are the moves by players. Game
tree involves initial state, actions function, and result Function.
• Example: Tic-Tac-Toe game tree:
• The following figure is showing part of the game-tree for tic-
tac-toe game. Following are some key points of the game:
• There are two players MAX and MIN.
• Players have an alternate turn and start with MAX.
• MAX maximizes the result of the game tree
• MIN minimizes the result.
 Example Explanation:
• From the initial state, MAX has 9 possible moves as he starts first. MAX
place x and MIN place o, and both player plays alternatively until we reach
a leaf node where one player has three in a row or all squares are filled.
• Both players will compute each node, minimax, the minimax value which is
the best achievable utility against an optimal adversary.
• Suppose both the players are well aware of the tic-tac-toe and playing the
best play. Each player is doing his best to prevent another one from
winning. MIN is acting against Max in the game.
• So in the game tree, we have a layer of Max, a layer of MIN, and each layer
is called as Ply. Max place x, then MIN puts o to prevent Max from winning,
and this game continues until the terminal node.
• In this either MIN wins, MAX wins, or it's a draw. This game-tree is the
whole search space of possibilities that MIN and MAX are playing tic-tac-
toe and taking turns alternately.
• From the initial state, MAX has 9 possible moves as he starts first. MAX
place x and MIN place o, and both player plays alternatively until we reach
a leaf node where one player has three in a row or all squares are filled.
• Both players will compute each node, minimax, the minimax value which is
the best achievable utility against an optimal adversary.
• Suppose both the players are well aware of the tic-tac-toe and playing the
best play. Each player is doing his best to prevent another one from
winning. MIN is acting against Max in the game.
• So in the game tree, we have a layer of Max, a layer of MIN, and each layer
is called as Ply. Max place x, then MIN puts o to prevent Max from winning,
and this game continues until the terminal node.
• In this either MIN wins, MAX wins, or it's a draw. This game-tree is the
whole search space of possibilities that MIN and MAX are playing tic-tac-
toe and taking turns alternately.
• Hence adversarial Search for the minimax procedure works as
follows:
• It aims to find the optimal strategy for MAX to win the game.
• It follows the approach of Depth-first search.
• In the game tree, optimal leaf node could appear at any depth of
the tree.
• Propagate the minimax values up to the tree until the terminal
node discovered.
• In a given game tree, the optimal strategy can be determined
from the minimax value of each node, which can be written as
MINIMAX(n). MAX prefer to move to a state of maximum value
and MIN prefer to move to a state of minimum value then:
• Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm
which is used in decision-making and game theory. It provides
an optimal move for the player assuming that opponent is
also playing optimally.
• Mini-Max algorithm uses recursion to search through the
game-tree.
• Min-Max algorithm is mostly used for game playing in AI. Such
as Chess, Checkers, tic-tac-toe, go, and various tow-players
game. This Algorithm computes the minimax decision for the
current state.
• In this algorithm two players play the game, one is called MAX
and other is called MIN.
• Both the players fight it as the opponent player gets the
minimum benefit while they get the maximum benefit.
• Both Players of the game are opponent of each other, where
MAX will select the maximized value and MIN will select the
minimized value.
• The minimax algorithm performs a depth-first
search algorithm for the exploration of the
complete game tree.
• The minimax algorithm proceeds all the way
down to the terminal node of the tree, then
backtrack the tree as the recursion.
Pseudo-code for MinMax Algorithm:
• Working of Min-Max Algorithm:
The working of the minimax algorithm can be easily described
using an example. Below we have taken an example of
game-tree which is representing the two-player game.
• In this example, there are two players one is called
Maximizer and other is called Minimizer.
• Maximizer will try to get the Maximum possible score, and
Minimizer will try to get the minimum possible score.
• This algorithm applies DFS, so in this game-tree, we have to
go all the way through the leaves to reach the terminal
nodes.
• At the terminal node, the terminal values are given so we
will compare those value and backtrack the tree until the
initial state occurs. Following are the main steps involved in
solving the two-player game tree:
Step-1: In the first step, the algorithm generates the entire game-tree
and apply the utility function to get the utility values for the terminal
states. In the below tree diagram, let's take A is the initial state of the
tree. Suppose maximizer takes first turn which has worst-case initial
value =- infinity, and minimizer will take next turn which has worst-case
initial value = +infinity.
Step 2: Now, first we find the utilities value for the Maximizer, its initial value is -
∞, so we will compare each value in terminal state with initial value of Maximizer
and determines the higher nodes values. It will find the maximum among the all.

For node D max(-1,- -∞) => max(-1,4)= 4

For Node E max(2, -∞) => max(2, 6)= 6
For Node F max(-3, -∞) => max(-3,-5) = -3
For node G max(0, -∞) = max(0, 7) = 7
Step 3: In the next step, it's a turn for minimizer, so it will compare all nodes
value with +∞, and will find the 3rd layer node values.
For node B= min(4,6) = 4
For node C= min (-3, 7) = -3
Step 4: Now it's a turn for Maximizer, and it will again choose the maximum of all
nodes value and find the maximum value for the root node. In this game tree, there
are only 4 layers, hence we reach immediately to the root node, but in real games,
there will be more than 4 layers.
For node A max(4, -3)= 4

That was the complete workflow of the

minimax two player game.
 Properties of Mini-Max algorithm:
Complete- Min-Max algorithm is Complete. It will
definitely find a solution (if exist), in the finite search tree.

Optimal- Min-Max algorithm is optimal if both opponents

are playing optimally.

Time complexity- As it performs DFS for the game-tree, so

the time complexity of Min-Max algorithm is O(bm), where
b is branching factor of the game-tree, and m is the
maximum depth of the tree.

Space Complexity- Space complexity of Mini-max

algorithm is also similar to DFS which is O(bm).
 Limitation of the minimax Algorithm:

The main drawback of the minimax algorithm is that it

gets really slow for complex games such as Chess, go,
etc. This type of games has a huge branching factor,
and the player has lots of choices to decide. This
limitation of the minimax algorithm can be improved
from alpha-beta pruning which we have discussed in
the next topic.