Yngvi Björnsson

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Yngvi Björnsson ¹

Yngvi Björnsson,
an Icelandic computer scientist and games researcher. After a B.S in Computer Science at the University of Iceland, and a few years in the industry (1988-1994), Yngvi studied at the University of Alberta in Canada ¹ . As member of the Games research group ², he co-authored the chess program The Turk along with Andreas Junghanns, which competed at the WMCCC 1996 in Jakarta ³ , developed the Lines of Action program and three times gold medal winner YL, co-authored the Hex program Mongoose and made his Ph.D. thesis in Computer Science, Selective Depth-First Game-Tree Search at the University of Alberta in 2002 ⁴ advised by Professor Tony Marsland. Yngvi contributed with Uncertainty Cut-Offs ^{5 6}, and invented Multi-Cut Pruning ⁷ .

Since 2004, Yngvi Björnsson is associate professor at the School of Computer Science, Reykjavík University, Iceland. He served as Vice-President of the ICGA from 2005 until 2011 and organized the WCCC 2005 in Reykjavík.

Photos

First medals in LoA: Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson (Gold), and Darse Billings ⁸ Yngvi Björnsson awards Anthony Cozzie with the Shannon Trophy, WCCC 2005, Reykjavík

Chinook

Yngvi Björnsson was member of the Chinook team around Jonathan Schaeffer, solving Checkers ⁹ :

Yngvi’s major contribution to the project was with the Chinook endgame databases. His research interests include heuristic search in artificial intelligence.

General Game Playing

Yngvi Björnsson is involved in the successful development of the General Game Playing program Cadiaplayer from Reykjavik University, which won the General Game Playing world-champion in 2007 and 2008 ¹⁰ .

Selected Publications

^{11 12 13}

1996 ...

• Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Brockington, Andreas Junghanns, Aske Plaat (1996). Report on the Advances in Computer Chess 8 Conference. ICCA Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3 » Advances in Computer Chess 8
• Tony Marsland, Yngvi Björnsson. (1997). From MiniMax to Manhattan. In Deep Blue Versus Kasparov: The Significance for Artificial Intelligence. AAAI Workshop 1997. pdf
• Andreas Junghanns, Jonathan Schaeffer, Mark Brockington, Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (1997). Diminishing Returns for Additional Search in Chess. Advances in Computer Chess 8, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland, Jonathan Schaeffer, Andreas Junghanns (1997). Searching with Uncertainty Cut-offs. ICCA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, pdf preprint
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland, Jonathan Schaeffer, Andreas Junghanns (1997). Searching with Uncertainty Cut-offs. Advances in Computer Chess 8
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (1998). Risk Management in Game-tree Pruning. Technical Report TR 98-07, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (1998). Multi-cut Pruning in Alpha-Beta Search. CG 1998, see also MC2001 for an expanded version.

2000 ...

• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (2000). Risk Management in Game-tree Pruning. Information Sciences, 122(1):23–41, 2000. pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson (2000). YL wins Lines of Action Tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 23, No. 3 » 5th Computer Olympiad
• Tony Marsland, Yngvi Björnsson (2000). From Minimax to Manhattan. in Jaap van den Herik, Hiroyuki Iida (eds.) (2000). Games in AI Research. Universiteit Maastricht
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (2000). Selective Depth-First Search Methods. in Jaap van den Herik, Hiroyuki Iida (eds.) (2000). Games in AI Research. Universiteit Maastricht, pdf preprint
• Darse Billings, Yngvi Björnsson (2000). Mona and YL’s Lines of Action LOA Page

2001

• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (2001). Learning Search Control in Adversary Games. Advances in Computer Games 9, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (2001). Multi-cut Alpha-Beta Pruning in Game Tree Search. Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 252, pdf
• Tony Marsland, Yngvi Björnsson (2001). Variable-Depth Search. Advances in Computer Games 9, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Winands (2001). YL wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 3 » 6th Computer Olympiad

2002

• Yngvi Björnsson (2002). Selective Depth-First Game-Tree Search. Ph.D. thesis, University of Alberta
• Yngvi Björnsson, Tony Marsland (2002). Learning Control of Search Extensions. Proceedings of the 6th Joint Conference on Information Sciences (JCIS 2002), pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Winands (2002). YL wins Lines of Action tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 » 7th Computer Olympiad

2003

• Darse Billings, Yngvi Björnsson (2003). Search and Knowledge in Lines of Action. Advances in Computer Games 10, pdf
• Ryan Hayward, Yngvi Björnsson, Michael Johanson, Morgan Kan, Nathan Po, Jack van Rijswijck (2003). Solving 7x7 Hex: Virtual Connections and Game-state Reduction. Advances in Computer Games 10, pdf
• Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (2003). Building the Checkers 10-Piece Endgame Databases. Advances in Computer Games 10
• Yngvi Björnsson, Markus Enzenberger, Robert Holte, Jonathan Schaeffer, Peter Yap (2003). Comparison of Different Grid Abstractions for Pathfinding on Maps. IJCAI 2003, pdf

2004

• Yngvi Björnsson, Vignir Hafsteinsson, Ársæll Jóhannsson, Einar Jónsson (2004). Efficient Use of Reinforcement Learning in a Computer Game. in Computer Games: Artificial Intellignece, Design and Education (CGAIDE'04), pdf
• Jan Willemson, Yngvi Björnsson (2004). Six wins Hex tournament. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 » 9th Computer Olympiad

2005

• Ryan Hayward, Yngvi Björnsson, Michael Johanson, Morgan Kan, Nathan Po, Jack van Rijswijck (2005). Solving 7x7 Hex with domination, fill-in, and virtual connections. Theoretical Computer Science, 349(2):123–139, 2005. pdf
• Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (2005). Solving Checkers. IJCAI 2005, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Markus Enzenberger, Robert Holte, Jonathan Schaeffer (2005). Fringe Search: Beating A* at Pathfinding on Game Maps. pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Jonathan Schaeffer, Nathan Sturtevant (2005). Partial Information Endgame Databases. Advances in Computer Games 11, pdf, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Jaap van den Herik (2005). The 13th World Computer-Chess Championship. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3 » WCCC 2005
• Yngvi Björnsson (2005). Report on the 13th World Computer Chess Championship. BNVKI Newsletter, October 2005, pdf

2006

• Jaap van den Herik, Yngvi Björnsson, Nathan S. Netanyahu (eds.) (2006). Computers and Games: 4th International Conference. CG 2004
• Yngvi Björnsson, Ryan Hayward, Michael Johanson, Jack van Rijswijck (2006). Dead Cell Analysis in Hex and the Shannon Game. In Graph Theory in Paris: Proceedings of a Conference in Memory of Claude Berge (CT'04 Paris), zipped ps
• Sverrir Sigmundarson, Yngvi Björnsson. (2006). Value Back-Propagation vs. Backtracking in Real-Time Search. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Workshop on Learning For Search, AAAI Press, pdf
• Yngvi Björnsson, Jónheiður Ísleifsdóttir (2006). Tools for debugging large game trees. 11th Game Programming Workshop, Hakone, Japan

2007

• Yngvi Björnsson, Jónheiður Ísleifsdóttir (2007). GTQL: A Query Language for Game Trees. CGW 2007 ¹⁴
• Vadim Bulitko, Yngvi Björnsson, Mitja Luvstrek, Jonathan Schaeffer, Sverrir Sigmundarson (2007). Dynamic Control in Path-Planning with Real-Time Heuristic Search. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS'07), September 22-26, Providence, RI, USA, 2007. pdf
• Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Björnsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (2007). Checkers is Solved. Science, Vol. 317, no. 5844

2008

• Hilmar Finnsson, Yngvi Björnsson. (2008). Simulation-Based Approach to General Game Playing. In The Twenty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press, 2008. Accepted. pdf, pdf
• Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson. (2008). Enhanced Realization Probability Search. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 3, No. 6
• Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson, Jahn-Takeshi Saito (2008). Monte-Carlo Tree Search Solver. CG 2008, pdf
• Jónheiður Ísleifsdóttir, Yngvi Björnsson. (2008). GTQ: A Language and Tool for Game-Tree Analysis. CG 2008, pdf

2009

• Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson (2009). Evaluation Function Based Monte-Carlo LOA. pdf ¹⁵
• Yngvi Björnsson, Vadim Bulitko, Nathan Sturtevant (2009). TBA*: Time-Bounded A*. IJCAI 2009, pdf

2010 ...

• Pálmi Skowronski, Yngvi Björnsson, Mark Winands (2010). Automated Discovery of Search-Extension Features. Advances in Computer Games 12, pdf
• Nathan Sturtevant, Vadim Bulitko, Yngvi Björnsson (2010). On Learning In Agent-Centered Search. AAMAS 2010. pdf
• Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson, Jahn-Takeshi Saito (2010). Monte Carlo Tree Search in Lines of Action. Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, Vol. 2, No. 4
• Michael Genesereth, Yngvi Björnsson (2013). The International 
General Game Playing Competition. AI Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 2
• Yngvi Björnsson, Stephan Schiffel (2013). Comparison of GDL Reasoners. IJCAI 2013 ¹⁶
• Tristan Cazenave, Mark Winands, Yngvi Björnsson (eds.) (2014). Computer Games. ECAI CGW 2014 ¹⁷

2020 ...

• Aðalsteinn Pálsson, Yngvi Björnsson (2021). Evaluating Interpretability Methods for DNNs in Game-Playing Agents. Advances in Computer Games 17

External Links

• Yngvi Björnsson's homepage
• Yngvi Björnsson's ICGA Tournaments
• The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Yngvi Bjornsson

References