Using genetic programming to evolve board evaluation functions

Employs the genetic programming paradigm to enable a computer to learn to play strategies for the ancient Egyptian boardgame Senet by evolving board evaluation functions. Formulating the problem in terms of board evaluation functions made it feasible to evaluate the fitness of game playing strategies by using tournament-style fitness evaluation. The game has elements of both strategy and chance. Our approach learns strategies which enable the computer to play consistently at a reasonably skillful level.