Call for papers for Technical Session : Machine Learning for "Games" of Perfect and Imperfect Information.

This session is part of ICMLA'02 (The 2002 International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications) which will be held simultaneously (same location and dates) with ICAI'02 (The 2002 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence), PDPTA (The International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications), CISST (The International Conference on Imaging Science, Systems, and Technology), and other workshops.
These conferences/workshops take place at the Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA June 24-27, 2002

The session will consider machine learning techniques that allows a computer to play games of perfect and imperfect information.

Some recent work (which may provide inspiration) in this area is shown at the end of this page, but this is only to demonstrate the type of areas that would be ideal for this sesssion and to provide inspiration. It is not meant to be a complete survey of the area, nor is it any indication of the quality of any conference, organisation or individuals.

The topics that could be included in this session include, but are not limited to.

• Adaptive Computing
• Awari
• Backgammon
• Bridge
• Chess
• Cooperative Learning
• Co-Evolution
• Cribbage
• Evolutionary Computing
• Foreign Currency Trading
• Game Theory
• Hybrid Algorithms
• Multistrategy Learning
• Negotiation
• Neural Networks
• Othello
• Poker
• Prisoners Dilemma
• Rummy
• Statistical Learning
• Stock Market Forecasting

You are invited to submit a paper (max 7 pages). All papers will be reviewed and those accepted will be published in the conference proceedings. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference.

Important Dates

1st January 2002 (Monday) : Deadline for submission of papers (max 7 pages)
15th March 2002 (Friday) : Notification of Acceptance
22nd April 2002 (Monday): Camera-Ready Papers & Pre-registration due
24th June 2002 to 27th June 2002 (Monday to Thursday) : ICMLA Conference

Submission of Papers

Authors will need to submit three copies of their paper; maximum of 7 pages; single-spaced; with a font size of 11 or 12.

Papers must not have been previously published. The first page of the paper should include:

• title of the paper, names, email addresses, the affiliations
• the postal address, telephone number, and fax number for the first
  or corresponding author only
• abstract of maximum of 150 words
• a list of max 5 keywords

Papers should be sent to

Graham Kendall
School Of Computer Science & IT
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham
NG8 1BB
UK

E-mail submissions are also acceptable (to gxk@cs.nott.ac.uk) as either Word of PDF.

Evaluation Process

Papers will be evaluated for originality, significance, and clarity. Each paper will be evaluated by at least two reviewers.

Review Committee

The review committe for this session is as follows (other names may be addded)

• Jane Binner, Nottingham Trent University, UK
• Paul Darwen, University of Queensland, Australia
• Jason Noble, The University of Leeds, UK
• Lyndon While, University of Western Australia, Australia
• Xin Yao, The University of Birmingham, UK

Publication

The conference proceedings will be published by CSREA Press (ISBN), as a hardcopy. In addition, a CD version will also be available. The proceedings will be available at the conference.

After the conference some papers will be considered for journal publication.

Organisers and Sponsors

A number of faculty members and their staff in cooperation with the Monte Carlo Resort (Conference Division, Las Vegas) will be organizing the conference. The conference will be sponsored by World Academy of Sciences and co-sponsored by Computer Science Research, Education, & Applications Press (CSREA: USA Federal EIN # 58-2171953) along with other research centers (to be announced at a later time).

(Previous conferences' sponsors included: CSREA, the National Supercomputing Center for Energy and the Environment - DOE, The International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, The International Technology Institute (ITI), The Java High Performance Computing research group, World Scientific and Engineering Society, Sundance Digitial Signal Processing Inc., the Computer Vision Research and Applications Tech., ...)

Location of the ICMLA'02 Conference

The conference will be held in the Monte Carlo Resort hotel Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The Monte Carlo Resort is a mega hotel with excellent conference facilities and over 3,000 rooms. The hotel is only a few minutes from the Las Vegas airport with 24-hour shuttle service to and from the airport. This hotelhas many vacation and recreational attractions, including: waterfalls, casino, spa, pools & kiddie pools, sunning decks, Easy River water ride, wave pool with cascades, lighted tennis courts, healthspa (with workout equipment, whirlpool, sauna, ...), arcade virtual reality game rooms, nightly shows, snack bars, a number of restaurants, shopping area, bars, ... Many of these attractions areopen 24 hours a day and most are suitable for families and children. The negotiated hotel's room rate for conference attendees is very reasonable (79USD + tax) per night (no extra charge for double occupancy) for the duration of the conference.

The hotel is within walking distance from most Las Vegas attractions (major shopping areas, recreational destinations, fine dining and night clubs, free street shows, ...).

Las Vegas is only a few hours away from cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and the Grand Canyon.

Exhibition

An exhibition is planned for the duration of the conference. We have reserved 20+ exhibit spaces. Interested parties should contact H. R. Arabnia (address is given below). All exhibitors will be considered to be the co-sponsors of the conference.

Other Information

CONFERENCE CHAIR (ICMLA'02):

Prof. M. Arif Wani
Department of Computer Science
California State University Bakersfield
Bakersfield, California 93311-1022, U.S.A,
a.wani@cs.csubak.edu,
a.wani@tees.ac.uk (use this email address until 25 September, 2001 only)

CONFERENCE CO-CHAIR (ICMLA'02):

Prof. Krzysztof Cios
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Colorado at Denver
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Denver, CO 80217, U.S.A.
Krys.Cios@cudenver.edu

CONFERENCE VICE-CHAIR (ICMLA'02):

Prof. Hamid R. Arabnia
Department of Computer Science
415 Graduate Studies Research Center
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602-7404, U.S.A.

Tel: (706) 542-3480
Fax: (706) 542-2966
E-mail: hra@cs.uga.edu

Recent Work (for inspiration!)

• Barone, L. and While, L. Adaptive Learning for Poker. In proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2000 (GECCO 2000), July 10-12, 2000, Las Vegas, Nevada, pp 566-573, 2000.
• Darwen P., Yao X. Why More Choices Cause Less Cooperation in Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001 (CEC'01), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001, pp 987-994
• Darwen P. Why Co-Evolution beats Temporal Difference Learning at Backgammon for a Linear Architecture, but not a Non-Linear Architecture. In proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001 (CEC'01), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001, pp 1003-1010
• Davidson A., Billings D., Schaeffer J.and Szafron D. Improved Opponent Modeling in Poker. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IC-AI'2000), pp. 1467-1473,
  2000
• English T. M. Learning to Focus Selectively on Possible Lines of Play in Checkers. In proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001 (CEC'01), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001, pp 1019-1024
• Fogel, D. Blondie24 : Playing at the Edge of AI. Morgan Kaufmann, 2001, ISBN:1558607838).
• Ishibuchi H., Sakamoto R. and Nakashima T. Effect of Localized Selection on the Evolution of Unplanned Coordination in a Market Selection Game. In proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001 (CEC'01), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001, pp 1011-1018
• Kendall G. and Willdig M. . An Investigation of an Adaptive Poker player. Accepted for The 14th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'01), Adelaide, Australia, 10 - 14 December 2001)
• Kendall, G. and Whitwell, G. An Evolutionary Approach for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function using Population Dynamics. In proceedings of Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2001 (CEC'01), COEX Center, Seoul, Korea, May 27-29, 2001, pp 995-1002
• Noble J. and Watson R. A. Pareto Coevolution: using Performance Against CoEvolved Opponents in a Game as Dimensions for Pareto Selection. In proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2001 (GECCO 2001), San Francisco, California, USA, July 7-11, 2001, pp 493-500
• Schaeffer J. The Games Computers (and People) Play, Advances in Computers 50 , Marvin Zelkowitz editor, Academic Press, pp. 189-266, 2000.
• Schaeffer J. One Jump Ahead : Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers. Springer-Verlag Telos; ISBN: 0387949305