Connect6

a [|two-player] [|abstract strategy] board game of the k-in-a-row family similar to Gomoku, introduced in 2003 by I-Chen Wu and presented at Advances in Computer Games 11 in 2005. Black and White alternately place **two** stones of their own colour on empty intersections of a Go-like board, except that Black (the first player) places one stone only for the first move. The one who gets six or more stones in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) first wins the game. Most often, Connect6 is played on a 19x19 Go board, proposed for professional players is a 59x59 board. Since 2006, Connect6 is played regularely by computers at the Computer Olympiad organized by the ICGA. Search algorithms used are Alpha-Beta / MTD(f) along with VCF search (Victory by Continuous Four) to find a path to win in the endgame, and Monte-Carlo Tree Search, UCT, as well as Proof-number search also in conjunction with the novel relevance-zone-oriented proof (RZOP) search used to solve various openings, such as the Mickey Mouse opening .|| toc =Selected Programs=  =GUI= >
 * Home * Games * Connect6**
 * [[image:320px-Closeup_of_a_Connect_6_game.jpg link=""]] ||~ || **Connect6**, Connect(m,n,6,2,1)
 * Connect6 on a large board ||~ ||^ ||
 * [|Bitstronger] aka Cloudict by Liang Li, Hao Cui, Ruijian Wang, Siran Lin
 * [|MeinStein] by Theo van der Storm, Jan Krabbenbos
 * [|MoreThenFive] by Jiajia Guo, Xiaomeng Yang, Liang Yunzhao, Jianbo Zhao
 * [|NCTU6] by I-Chen Wu, Hsiu-Chen Chang
 * [|X6] by Sih-Yuan Liou, Shi-Jim Yen
 * ConnectMore by Liang Li written in Python 3  - for Cloudict and more ...

=Computer Olympiads=
 * 11th Computer Olympiad, Turin 2006
 * 12th Computer Olympiad, Amsterdam 2007
 * 13th Computer Olympiad, Beijing 2008
 * 14th Computer Olympiad, Pamplona 2009
 * 15th Computer Olympiad, Kanazawa 2010
 * 16th Computer Olympiad, Tilburg 2011
 * 17th Computer Olympiad, Yokohama 2013

=See also=
 * Connect Four
 * Gomoku
 * Renju

=Selected Publications=

2005 ...

 * I-Chen Wu, Dei-Yen Huang (**2005**). //[|A New Family of k -in-a-Row Games]//. Advances in Computer Games 11, [|pdf]
 * I-Chen Wu, Dei-Yen Huang, Hsiu-Chen Chang (**2005**). //Connect6//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4, [|pdf]
 * I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (**2006**). //NCTU6 wins Connect6 tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 » 11th Computer Olympiad
 * I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (**2007**). //X6 wins Connect6 tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 » 12th Computer Olympiad
 * I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (**2008**). //NCTU6-Lite wins Connect6 tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 » 13th Computer Olympiad
 * 2009**
 * Sheng-Hao Chiang, I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (**2009**). //On Drawn K-In-A-Row Games//. Advances in Computer Games 12
 * Changming Xu, Zongmin Ma, Junjie Tao, Xinhe Xu (**2009**). //Enhancements of Proof Number Search in Connect6//. IEEE Control and Decision Conference
 * Changming Xu, Zongmin Ma, Xinhe Xu (**2009**). //A method to construct knowledge table-base in k-in-a-row games//. [|SAC 2009]
 * Ping-Hung Lin, I-Chen Wu, Shun-Chin Hsu (**2009**). //Bit wins Connect6 tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 » 14th Computer Olympiad
 * Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang (**2009**). //The Bitboard Design and Bitwise Computing in Connect Six//. 14th Game Programming Workshop

2010 ...

 * Ping-Hung Lin (**2010**). //Relevance-Zone-Oriented Proof Search for Connect6//. Ph.D. thesis
 * I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (**2010**). //[|Relevance-Zone-Oriented Proof Search for Connect6]//. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 2, No. 3
 * I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin, Shi-Jim Yen (**2010**). //MoreThenFive wins the Connect-6 Tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 33, No. 3 » 15th Computer Olympiad
 * I-Chen Wu, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Ping-Hung Lin, Der-Johng Sun, Yi-Chih Chan, Bo-Ting Chen (**2010**). //[|Job-Level Proof-Number Search for Connect6]//. CG 2010
 * 2011**
 * Sheng-Hao Chiang, I-Chen Wu, Ping-Hung Lin (**2011**). //[|Drawn K-In-A-Row Games]//. [|Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 412]
 * I-Chen Wu, Hsin-Ti Tsai, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Yi-Shan Lin, Chieh-Min Chang, Ping-Hung Lin (**2011**). //[|Temporal Difference Learning for Connect6]//. Advances in Computer Games 13
 * Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang (**2011**). //Two-Stage Monte Carlo Tree Search for Connect6//. [|IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 3]
 * 2012**
 * Liang Li, Hong Liu, Peiyu Liu, Taoying Liu, Wei Li, Hao Wang (**2012**). //[|A Node-based Parallel Game Tree Algorithm Using GPUs]//. CLUSTER 2012, [|pdf]
 * Shi-Jim Yen, Jung-Kuei Yang, Kuo-Yuan Kao, Tai-Ning Yang (**2012**). //[|Bitboard Knowledge Base System and Elegant Search Architectures for Connect6]//. [|Knowledge-Based Systems], Vol. 34
 * 2013**
 * I-Chen Wu, Hao-Hua Kang, Hung-Hsuan Lin, Ping-Hung Lin, Ting-Han Wei, Chieh-Min Chang, Ting-Fu Liao (**2013**). //Dependency-Based Search for Connect6//. CG 2013
 * Ting-Han Wei, Wen-Jie Tseng, I-Chen Wu, Shi-Jim Yen (**2013**). //MOBILE 6 Wins Connect6 Tournament//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 » 17th Computer Olympiad
 * 2014**
 * Ting-Han Wei, I-Chen Wu, Chao-Chin Liang, Bing-Tsung Chiang, Wen-Jie Tseng, Shi-Jim Yen, Chang-Shing Lee (**2014**). //Job-Level Algorithms for Connect6 Opening Position Analysis//. ECAI CGW 2014

2015 ...

 * Ting-Han Wei, I-Chen Wu, Chao-Chin Liang, Bing-Tsung Chiang, Wen-Jie Tseng, Shi-Jim Yen, Chang-Shing Lee (**2015**). //Job-Level Algorithms for Connect6 Opening Book Construction//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3
 * Liang Li, Hong Liu, Hao Wang, Taoying Liu, Wei Li (**2015**). //[|A Parallel Algorithm for Game Tree Search Using GPGPU]//. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 26, No. 8

=External Links=
 * [|Connect6 from Wikipedia]
 * [|Introduction to Connect6]
 * [|Connect6 (ICGA Tournaments)]
 * [|m,n,k-game from Wikipedia]

=References= =What links here?= include page="Connect6" component="backlinks" limit="120"
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