Here are my summaries of the keynote and afternoon session at #Sprouts2025: https://combinatorialgametheory.blogspot.com/2025/04/sprouts-2025-keynote-and-afternoon.html
A lot of other great things happened yesterday, so I wrote another post about that: https://combinatorialgametheory.blogspot.com/2025/04/sprouts2025-wrap-up.html
Thanks to everyone who came and made Sprouts great this year!
I wrote my summaries of talks for the early morning session of #Sprouts2025 last night: https://combinatorialgametheory.blogspot.com/2025/04/sprouts-2025-morning-talks.html
#Sprouts2025 was today! We had eleven student talks, the most ever! Five of those were early-morning talks for presenters in distant time zones, the most ever! We had six computer players, the most ever! We had sixteen people participate in our human tournament, the most ever!
I'm very excited that this year was such a success.
The website (https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/) has been updated with the winners of the tournaments. Congratulations to Hiyu Inoue for winning the human tournament. Congratulations to Ian Grenville for his player, HotShot, which won the computer tournament. A sincere Thank You to Hiyu for defeating HotShot in the John Henry match, a big win for Team Humans.
You can try playing against all six of the computer players on the #TopplingDominoes site: https://kyleburke.info/DB/combGames/topplingDominoes.html
Thank you to everyone who presented and attended! See you all at Sprouts 2026!
#Sprouts2025 notebooks looking great! Thanks for the excellent poster, Craig!
#Sprouts2025 update: we received three computer players overnight! If we get late submissions, we'll try to get them added. I should be able to add anything I get before I fall asleep tonight.
I think the schedule for #Sprouts2025 is set! https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/ We got a ton of talk proposals in the last week and we filled up (and went over by a little). We have:
* Five early morning talks for speakers from Asia.
* Keynote by Matt Ferland
* Afternoon talks for speakers not-as-far-away.
* Human and Computer #TopplingDominoes tournaments.
We have two submitted computer players, and I know of three other people who may submit one. If just one of them does, we'll have our biggest number of submissions ever! (If you submit late, please let me know so I know to look for it.)
Looking forward to Saturday!
#Sprouts2025 is coming along nicely! We have almost filled all the talk slots and I'm still getting additional talk applications. Here's the schedule: https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/
So far we only have one computer player submitted (not counting the built-in MCTS player) but at least one more could come in. The submitted one was written quickly, but uses some good tricks. You can write, test, and submit your own player here: https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/sprouts2025ComputerTournament.php
Although our presentations are for undergrads, everyone is welcome to attend. Many people will come for only the Toppling Dominoes tournament (https://kyleburke.info/DB/combGames/topplingDominoes.html) at the end of the day.
Sprouts 2025 will be on April 12, 2025. Sprouts is a #CombinatorialGames conference with a focus on undergraduates.
We traditionally have a focus on math and computer science, but are very willing to broaden our scope. The homepage with the Call for Talks is: https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/
We will have talks for and by undergraduates and human and AI tournaments. Our game this year is: Toppling Dominoes, which you can play here: https://kyleburke.info/DB/combGames/topplingDominoes.html
The AI tournament is held in JavaScript. Instructions for submitting a player are here: https://kyleburke.info/sprouts/sprouts2025/sprouts2025ComputerTournament.php. I have had recent success with students training their players in Python, then using #TensorFlowJS to port it over to JS.
Registration is free! Please see the homepage for instructions to register.
#Sprouts2025 #SproutsConference #AbstractGames #BoardGames #UndergraduateResearch
How well does #TensorFlowJS work? I've had some students do projects with it with mixed results. They are able to create players that make moves and those moves aren't terrible, but I am curious whether there's something else we should be doing.
I'm curious because, as we prepare to announce #Sprouts2025, I would like to offer this as an avenue for creating players for the Computer Player tournament.
