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48Stones is still undefeated!

The best score to date (23-25) was achieved by International Oware Champion Trevor Simon and by Joan Sala’s artificial intelligence engine Aalina.

Can you beat this score or even reach a tie with 48Stones?

Challenge open to:

  • Master Oware players endorsed by The Oware Society
  • Independent computer scientists / hobbyists
  • Universities researchers in the fields of games, computation, A.I.
  • Private technology companies

3 steps:

  1. Register - fill in the form
  2. Schedule - once the registration validated, you will receive schedule options
  3. Play - the challenge rules are published hereafter

Master challenge rules

  1. A series of 3 games will be played consecutively in a single session
  2. The games are played on the online gaming platform playok.com
  3. The game time is set to the maximum possible: 15 minutes with an additional 10 seconds per move
  4. The games are “unrated” (i.e., the outcome of the game doesn’t affect the personal ELO score of the player)
  5. The “undo” functionality is enabled, in case any player has made a typo when entering a move. The player can ask to undo a move no more than 3 times and must accept all the unlikely “undo” requests from 48Stones
  6. The games are in “public” viewing mode, and will be recorded on video for reference
  7. The player may have to create an account on playok.com (it’s free) and communicate the username when registering to play against 48Stones
  8. Once the date and time are agreed for the game session, 48stones will invite the player for the games within playok, with the predefined settings: 15’+10”, unrated, undo, public
  9. The transcripts of the best games will be published here and could be shared by the media within the Oware and scientific communities.

Important notes

  • Our objective is to ensure both the player and 48Stones play the best game possible. This is why the time allocation is set to the longest possible time and why the “undo” functionality is enabled.
  • For ethical reasons, the 48stones database is not available to anybody. Xavier Blanvillain manually enters the moves that the database suggests. Although every effort is made to enter the database’s moves rapidly and without error, the generous time allotment and the “undo” functionality will help with game quality. Computer scientists using their own software and databases will also benefit from this.
  • As part of general game etiquette, players are asked, in the event of a loop during the endgame, to settle the game by distributing to the players the remaining seeds in play. This is to avoid excessively long games, waiting for the playok platform to recognise the loop (which on rare occasions may not settle the end result accurately, a known flaw in playok).
  • The players are advised to connect to the platform playok.com with a computer because the chat function is visible while playing and we can communicate with each other. However, if a computer isn’t available, a smartphone works well too and uses little mobile phone data.

For any questions, feel free to reach us at challenge@48stones.com

Participation to date

(last updated March 14, 2023)