Co-Evolution in the Successful Learning of Backgammon Strategy

Following Tesauro's work on TD-Gammon, we used a 4,000 parameter feedforward neural network to develop a competitive backgammon evaluation function. Play proceeds by a roll of the dice, application of the network to all legal moves, and selection of the position with the highest evaluation. However, no backpropagation, reinforcement or temporal difference learning methods were employed. Instead we apply simple hillclimbing in a relative fitness environment. We start with an initial champion of all zero weights and proceed simply by playing the current champion network against a slightly mutated challenger and changing weights if the challenger wins. Surprisingly, this worked rather well. We investigate how the peculiar dynamics of this domain enabled a previously discarded weak method to succeed, by preventing suboptimal equilibria in a meta-game of self-learning.