Quantum Checkers: The Development and Analysis of a Quantum Combinatorial Game

TL;DR

This paper introduces quantum checkers, a novel quantum version of the classic game, incorporating quantum mechanics principles to create a complex, tunable game for AI benchmarking and human learning.

Contribution

It develops a new quantum combinatorial game with multiple levels of 'quantumness' and analyzes its complexity and potential as a benchmark and educational tool.

Findings

Quantum checkers integrates superposition, entanglement, and interference.

Initial complexity analysis shows the game is challenging for AI agents.

The game serves as a framework for AI learning and human intuition building in quantum mechanics.

Abstract

This paper develops and analyses a novel quantum combinatorial game: quantum checkers (codenamed Cheqqers). The concepts of superposition, entanglement, measurements and interference from quantum mechanics are integrated into the game of checkers by adding new types of legal moves. The addition of these new rules is done gradually by introducing several levels of `quantumness'. Quantum checkers provides a framework for interpolating between a known and solved classical game and a more complex quantum game, and serves as 1) a benchmark for AI players learning to play quantum games and 2) an interesting game for human players that allows them to build intuition for quantum phenomena. We provide the initial analysis on the complexity of this game using random agents and a Monte Carlo tree search agent.