Adversarial Search

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 agents 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 that help to model and solve games in AI.
Types of Game information
Perfect information

Imperfect information
 1. Perfect information:
A game with the perfect information is one in
which agents can look into the complete board.
Agents have all the information about the game,
and they can see each other moves.

Ex: Chess, Checkers, Go, etc.

 2.Imperfect information:
If in a game agents do not have all the
information about the game and are not aware
of what's going on, such types of games are
called the game with imperfect information.

Ex: tic-tac-toe, Battleship, blind, Bridge, etc.

Types of Game

Deterministic games

Non-Deterministic games
 1.Deterministic games:
Deterministic games are those games that
follow a strict pattern and set of rules for the
games, and there is no randomness associated
with them.
Ex: chess, Checkers, Go, tic-tac-toe, etc.
 2. Non-deterministic games:

Non-deterministic games are those games that have various

unpredictable events and have 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.

Ex: Backgammon, Monopoly, Poker, etc.

 Types of Games in AI

Deterministic Chance Moves

Perfect Chess, Checkers, go, Backgammon,
information Othello monopoly
Imperfect Battleships, blind, tic-tac- Bridge, poker,
information toe scrabble, nuclear
war
 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.
 Formalization of the problem:
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 the 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.
For tic-tac-toe, utility values are +1, -1, and 0
For tic-tac-toe,
utility values are +1(win), -1(loss), and 0(draw)
 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.
The game tree involves the initial state, actions
function, and result Function.
 Example: Tic-Tac-Toe game tree:
The following figure shows part of the game tree for the 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.
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 in Artificial Intelligence
•Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm that is
used in decision-making and game theory.
•It provides an optimal move for the player assuming that the
opponent is also playing optimally.
•The mini-Max algorithm uses recursion to search through the game
tree.
•The 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
the other is called MIN.
 Pseudo-code for MinMax Algorithm:
function minimax(node, depth, maximizingPlayer) is
if depth ==0 or node is a terminal node then
return static evaluation of node

if MaximizingPlayer then // for Maximizer Player

maxEva= -infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, false)
maxEva= max(maxEva,eva) //gives Maximum of the values
return maxEva
else // for Minimizer player
minEva= +infinity
for each child of node do
eva= minimax(child, depth-1, true)
minEva= min(minEva, eva) //gives minimum of the values
Initial call:
return minEva Minimax(node, 3, true)
Step-1:
In the first step, the algorithm
generates the entire game tree
and applies the utility function to
get the utility values for the
terminal states.
In the tree diagram, let's take A as
the initial state of the tree.
Suppose the maximizer takes the
first turn which has the worst-
case initial value =- infinity, and
the minimizer will take the next
turn which has the 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.
Alpha-Beta Pruning
•Alpha-beta pruning is a modified version of the minimax algorithm.
•It is an optimization technique for the minimax algorithm.
•As we have seen in the minimax search algorithm the number of game
states it has to examine is exponential in the depth of the tree. Since we
cannot eliminate the exponent, but we can cut it to half. Hence there is a
technique by which without checking each node of the game tree we can
compute the correct minimax decision, and this technique is called pruning.
This involves two threshold parameter Alpha and beta for future expansion,
so it is called alpha-beta pruning. It is also called as Alpha-Beta
Algorithm.
•Alpha-beta pruning can be applied at any depth of a tree,
and sometimes it not only prune the tree leaves but also
entire sub-tree.
•The two-parameter can be defined as:
• Alpha: The best (highest-value) choice we have found
so far at any point along the path of Maximizer. The
initial value of alpha is -∞.
• Beta: The best (lowest-value) choice we have found so
far at any point along the path of Minimizer. The initial
value of beta is +∞.
The Alpha-beta pruning to a standard minimax
algorithm returns the same move as the standard
algorithm does, but it removes all the nodes which
are not really affecting the final decision but making
the algorithm slow.
Hence by pruning these nodes, it makes the
algorithm fast.
 Condition for Alpha-beta pruning:

The main condition which required for alpha-beta pruning is: α>=β
 Key points about alpha-beta pruning:

•The Max player will only update the value of alpha.

•The Min player will only update the value of beta.

•While backtracking the tree, the node values will be passed

to upper nodes instead of values of alpha and beta.

•We will only pass the alpha, beta values to the child nodes.
 Working of Alpha-Beta Pruning:
Let's take an example of two-
player search tree to
understand the working of
Alpha-beta pruning
Step 1: At the first step the,
Max player will start first move
from node A where α= -∞ and
β= +∞, these value of alpha
and beta passed down to node
B where again α= -∞ and β=
+∞, and Node B passes the
same value to its child D.
Step 2: At Node D, the value of
α will be calculated as its turn
for Max. The value of α is
compared with firstly 2 and then
3, and the max (2, 3) = 3 will be
the value of α at node D and
node value will also 3.
Step 3: Now algorithm
backtrack to node B, where the
value of β will change as this is
a turn of Min, Now β= +∞, will
compare with the available
subsequent nodes value, i.e.
min (∞, 3) = 3, hence at node B
now α= -∞, and β= 3. In the
next step, algorithm traverse
the next successor of Node B
which is node E, and the values
of α= -∞, and β= 3 will also be
passed.
Step 4: At node E,
Max will take its turn,
and the value of alpha
will change. The
current value of alpha
will be compared with
5, so max (-∞, 5) = 5,
hence at node E α= 5
and β= 3, where
α>=β, so the right
successor of E will be
pruned, and algorithm
will not traverse it,
and the value at node
E will be 5.
Step 5: At next step, algorithm again backtrack the tree,
from node B to node A. At node A, the value of alpha will be
changed the maximum available value is 3 as max (-∞, 3)=
3, and β= +∞, these two values now passes to right successor
of A which is Node C.
At node C, α=3 and β= +∞, and the same values will be
passed on to node F.
Step 6: At node F, again the value
of α will be compared with left
child which is 0, and max(3,0)= 3,
and then compared with right
child which is 1, and max(3,1)= 3
still α remains 3, but the node
value of F will become 1.
Step 7: Node F returns the node
value 1 to node C, at C α= 3 and β=
+∞, here the value of beta will be
changed, it will compare with 1 so
min (∞, 1) = 1. Now at C, α=3 and
β= 1, and again it satisfies the
condition α>=β, so the next child of
C which is G will be pruned, and the
algorithm will not compute the
entire sub-tree G.
Step 8: C now returns the value of 1
to A here the best value for A is max
(3, 1) = 3. Following is the final
game tree which is the showing the
nodes which are computed and
nodes which has never computed.
Hence the optimal value for the
maximizer is 3 for this example.
Move Ordering in Alpha-Beta pruning:
The effectiveness of alpha-beta pruning is highly dependent on the order in
which each node is examined. Move order is an important aspect of alpha-beta
pruning.
It can be of two types:
• Worst ordering: In some cases, alpha-beta pruning algorithm does not prune
any of the leaves of the tree, and works exactly as minimax algorithm. In this
case, it also consumes more time because of alpha-beta factors, such a move
of pruning is called worst ordering. In this case, the best move occurs on the
right side of the tree. The time complexity for such an order is O(b m).
• Ideal ordering: The ideal ordering for alpha-beta pruning occurs when lots of
pruning happens in the tree, and best moves occur at the left side of the tree.
We apply DFS hence it first search left of the tree and go deep twice as
minimax algorithm in the same amount of time. Complexity in ideal ordering
is O(bm/2).
Rules to find good ordering:
Following are some rules to find good ordering in alpha-beta pruning:
• Occur the best move from the shallowest node.
• Order the nodes in the tree such that the best nodes are checked first.
• Use domain knowledge while finding the best move. Ex: for Chess, try
order: captures first, then threats, then forward moves, backward
moves.
• We can bookkeep the states, as there is a possibility that states may
repeat.