CS 391 Selected Topics: Game AI Homework #5

Note: This work is to be done in groups of 2.  Each group will submit one assignment.  Although you may divide the work, both team members should be able to present/describe their partner's work upon request. 

Upper Section Yahtzee

First:

• Learn to play Yahtzee
• Play Yahtzee. I can loan you dice if needed. Scoring sheets and other resources can be found at BoardGameGeek.com.  Opportunities to play online abound.
• Then read "An Optimal Strategy for Yahtzee" by James Glenn.  Seriously, read it.  If not, you will misunderstand widgets and incorrectly answer the central question of this homework.

Now consider a simplified form of Yahtzee consisting of only the 6 upper section categories ("ones" through "sixes") and the upper section bonus of 35 for a total of 63 or more.  Let us call this minigame "Upper Section Yahtzee". 

We will approach the computation of optimal Upper Section Yahtzee play in stages.  In the first stage, you will count and construct the reachable Glenn-style "widgets" of play for all possible starts of turns.  You need not at this stage fully implement the widgets for solving.  It will be useful to store the widgets in such a way that will make it easy to retrieve them for retrograde analysis, i.e. solving turn-by-turn in stages from the last turn back to the beginning.

You will submit your code as a .zip file in an email that mentions the number of widgets generated for Upper Section Yahtzee.