Tic Tac Toe Poker
Researchers developed a computer program that can outplay humans at the game of poker. (Image: © John Ulan, University of Alberta) Computers have figured out how to win at chess, checkers. Below is a game tree for the tic-tac-toe game: The minimax algorithm explores the entire game tree using a depth-first search. At each node in the tree where A-player has to move, A-player would like to play the move that maximizes the payoff. Thus, A-player will assign the maximum score amongst the children to the node where Max makes a move.
The classic book BASIC Computer Games, published by Creative Computing, inspired a generation of programmers. The games were written by many people, and compiled by David H. Ahl. The fabulous illustrations accompanying each game were done by George Beker.
I've included all the games here for your tinkering pleasure. I've tested and tweaked each one of them to make sure they'll run with Vintage BASIC, though you may see a few oddities. That's part of the fun of playing with BASIC: it never works quite the same on two machines. The games will play better if you keep CAPS LOCK on, as they were designed to be used with capital-letter input.
Tic Tac Toe Poker
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The table below includes both links to the pages of the book at atariarchives.org, and the source code for each game. I obtained most of the source code from classicbasicgames.org, with the exception of Civil War and Super Star Trek, which I entered myself. The descriptions mainly come from an earlier edition of the book, 101 BASIC Computer Games, via the scans at digibarn.com. All book content is provided with the express consent of David H. Ahl, editor.
Tic Tac Toe Poker
You can download the entire set of games as a tarball (bcg.tar.gz) or a ZIP archive (bcg.zip).