Homogeneous group performance and stability in checkers

Abstract

Experiments on groups of Checkers programs, playing by majority voting, were performed to investigate performance and stability. Homogeneous groups, copies of the same program, was used to perform these experiments instead of heterogeneous group that was more complicated by factors of different programs. Experiments were performed based on a search-depth of 5, 10 and 12 using the Samuel checkers program. Games of checkers were played between groups of size ranging from 1 up to 10 for each side. Experiment results suggest that group performance increases as a kind of logarithm function as the group size gradually increases for stronger player, and the performance slowly decreases in the case of a weaker player, stability seems to increase as the group size increases.