AI and Board Games
From Shish: “Have a look at this. Some guy (and his kid, according to the About the Designers page) has designed a board game specifically to be hard for computers.” It’s called: Arimaa.
It’s an interesting idea. They are offering US$10,000 for a computer program that can beat a selected human player by 2020. The same principle exists behind an already established board game, Go, except that the programming challenge has much higher stakes:
A foundation in Taiwan, The Ing Chang-ki Goe Educational Foundation, is offering US$1,000,000 to the programmer of the first computer program that can beat a selected twelve-year-old GO player. At present, the best computer programs today play at a level of around 10-class, which is very weak, a bit stronger than an absolute beginner.
Now Professor Elwyn Berlekamp has upped the ante by offering US$5,000,000 to the first computer program that can beat a 5-dan player, which is equivalent to a strong expert player.
See: Chess vs Go for more. Go has simple rules, but holds many more combinations of possible moves than Chess.
6:16pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow 
A hint for uninitiated in Go levels:
Gup – 15 down to 1, if i remember right, beginner ranks
Dan – 10 down to 1, middle class players.
Dan – 1 up to 10, top class players.
Computers are able to play at about 10 Gup.