Computer Olympiad

The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games competition in which computer programs are pitted against one another in a wide range of strategy games. Established in 1989, it provides a formal arena for developers, researchers, and academic groups to demonstrate the strength of artificial intelligence programs across traditional board games, puzzles, and selected card and mathematical games. For many events, the Olympiad represents the recognised venue for claiming the title of the world’s strongest computer player in that particular discipline.
Although most contests involve classical board games, the scope has expanded to include areas such as contract bridge, Go variants, Backgammon, Mancala games, and puzzles. Over time, the Olympiad has become an important fixture in computer games research, particularly where algorithmic strategy, evaluation functions, and search efficiency are concerned.

Historical Development

The Olympiad was conceived in the 1980s by the chess master David Levy. The inaugural competition took place in 1989 at the Park Lane Hotel in London. It was organised annually until 1992, when the ruling committee could not secure a new organiser, causing an eight-year suspension.
The event was revived in 2000 when the Mind Sports Olympiad absorbed the competition into its programme. This revival continued the tradition of competitive computer gameplay, now under the wider umbrella of mind sports. Subsequently, the International Computer Games Association (ICGA) assumed responsibility for organising the Olympiad and has since aimed to run the event annually.
The Olympiad also frequently integrates with other international computer games events. Several editions were organised alongside the World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC), major conferences on computer games, and the Advances in Computer Games series. Decisions to co-host events sometimes resulted in chess medals not being awarded, since the chess component was treated through the WCCC rather than the Olympiad’s own medal structure.
In 2024, a parody website circulated an image resembling the Olympic emblem but substituted with Linux distribution logos colour-matched to the classic rings. Although humorous, this did not affect the competition’s formal standing.

Contests Across the Olympiads

Throughout its history, the Olympiad has hosted an array of games, many of which appeared recurrently. The series can be broadly divided into several phases.

First to Fifth Olympiads (1989–1992)

The early Olympiads featured a wide range of board games and served as the foundation of the competition’s format. After 1992, organising difficulties caused an interruption until 2000, when the Olympiad was reinstated under the Mind Sports Olympiad.

Sixth to Tenth Olympiads (2000–2004)

The fifth revived event was held in 2000 at Alexandra Palace, London. Subsequent Olympiads took place in Maastricht (2001 and 2002), Graz (2003), and Ramat Gan (2004).The 7th Olympiad was adopted by the ICCA as the 10th WCCC, while the 8th coincided with both the 11th WCCC and the 10th Advances in Computer Games Conference. As a consequence, chess medals were not awarded in those years.

Tenth to Fourteenth Olympiads (2005–2009)

The Olympiads in this phase were staged in Taipei (2005), Turin (2006), Amsterdam Science Park (2007), Beijing Golden Century Golf Club (2008), and Pamplona (2009). Organisation often overlapped with major chess and computer-games conferences.Notably, the Go-playing program Hand Talk, which won the gold medal in Computer Go during the tenth Olympiad, had originally been developed in assembly language by a retired chemistry professor from Sun Yat-sen University, China.During this period, the program Rybka was later retroactively disqualified from all ICCC events, resulting in adjusted rankings.

Fifteenth to Eighteenth Olympiads (2010–2015)

Kanazawa (2010), Tilburg (2011), Keio University (2013), and Leiden University (2015) hosted these Olympiads. Each event coincided with the World Computer Chess Championship and a scientific conference on computer games, reinforcing the link between research and competition.

Nineteenth to Twenty-fifth Olympiads (2016–2022)

Leiden University hosted both the 19th and 20th Olympiads (2016 and 2017). The 21st was held in Taipei in 2018 alongside the International Conference on Computers and Games, whereas the World Computer Chess Championship occurred separately in Stockholm.The 22nd Olympiad took place in Macau in 2019. Olympiads 23 (2020), 24 (2021), and 25 (2022) were held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling remote participation across multiple time zones.

Game Summaries and Participation

A wide variety of strategy and puzzle games have been featured, with recurring participation from academic research teams and independent developers. The following examples illustrate the breadth of competition.

Abalone

Abalone is a two-player abstract strategy game using a hexagonal board and fourteen marbles per side. The goal is to push six opposing marbles off the board.Notable programs include AbaPro, Nacre, and entries from Austria and Denmark.

Amazons

Amazons is played on a 10×10 board using queen-like pieces. Players move and then block squares, with the winner being the last player able to move.Numerous programs have competed, including Anky, Antiope, Aska, Otrere, Yamazon, and several developed by Johan de Koning, Hiroshi Yamashita, Richard Lorentz and research students, and others from Japan, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United States.

8 Queens Problem

A classic combinatorial puzzle, the 8 Queens competition attracted multiple programmatic solutions. Entries included Invader, TAS, Campya, BitStronger, FindFire, and many others developed by teams from Europe, Asia, and North America.

Awari

Awari, a member of the Mancala family, is an ancient pit-and-pebble game. Programs such as Lithidion, Wali, Conchos, and Marvin have represented countries including France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Backgammon

Backgammon competitions have featured programs such as Neurogammon, Video Gammon, Saitek Backgammon, Mephisto Backgammon, Backbrain AI, BGBlitz, GNU Backgammon, MCgammon, and Bax Maestro. Researchers including Gerald Tesauro contributed significant early work, with later entries arising from Europe and the United States.
These examples represent only a fraction of the full range of games contested at the Olympiad. Across its history, the competition has included Go variants, Shogi, Othello, Poker, Hex, and numerous mathematical puzzles, each contributing to algorithmic innovation.

Significance

The Computer Olympiad has played a pivotal role in fostering the advancement of game-playing artificial intelligence. It provides:

• A test bed for evaluating search algorithms, evaluation functions, and heuristic strategies
• A competitive environment encouraging innovation in adversarial reasoning
• An academic platform linking computer science research with practical implementation
• A historical record of evolving computational strength in strategic gameplay