Endgame Analysis of Dou Shou Qi

TL;DR

This paper presents an analysis of Dou Shou Qi, including the development of an engine, endgame tablebases for configurations with up to four pieces, and decision trees revealing interesting game patterns, advancing towards solving the game.

Contribution

The paper introduces the first endgame tablebases for Dou Shou Qi with up to four pieces and constructs decision trees based on these tablebases.

Findings

Identification of interesting endgame patterns

Development of the first endgame tablebases for the game

Progress towards theoretically solving Dou Shou Qi

Abstract

Dou Shou Qi is a game in which two players control a number of pieces, each of them aiming to move one of their pieces onto a given square. We implemented an engine for analyzing the game. Moreover, we created a series of endgame tablebases containing all configurations with up to four pieces. These tablebases are the first steps towards theoretically solving the game. Finally, we constructed decision trees based on the endgame tablebases. In this note we report on some interesting patterns.