An Efficient Method for Assessing the Strength of Mahjong Programs

Shih-Chieh Tang, Jr-Chang Chen, I-Chen Wu, I-Chen Wu

2025

Abstract

Mahjong, a tile-based game, is a complex four-player stochastic game of imperfect information involving both strategy and luck. Due to its inherent randomness, accurately assessing the strength of players requires a large number of games, which is time-consuming. This randomness primarily originates from two factors: (1) the initial arrangement of the wall and (2) tile stealing by players. Both affect the tiles players draw and thus influence game outcomes. To address the effect of these factors, especially the randomness introduced by stealing, we propose a novel method, called the stable draw wall (abbr. SDW). The SDW partitions the original wall into individual sub-walls for each player, ensuring that the tile drawing order of each player remains consistent and does not change by stealing from any player. The experimental results showed that when playing a small number of games, the win rate of a player by using the SDW is more accurate than by using the original wall. Consequently, our proposed method significantly mitigates the randomness effect caused by changing the order of draws, allowing a more reliable evaluation of the strength of players, which should focus on strategic decision making.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Tang S., Chen J. and Wu I. (2025). An Efficient Method for Assessing the Strength of Mahjong Programs. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART; ISBN 978-989-758-737-5, SciTePress, pages 124-132. DOI: 10.5220/0013112500003890

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart25,
author={Shih-Chieh Tang and Jr-Chang Chen and I-Chen Wu},
title={An Efficient Method for Assessing the Strength of Mahjong Programs},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART},
year={2025},
pages={124-132},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013112500003890},
isbn={978-989-758-737-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 2: ICAART
TI - An Efficient Method for Assessing the Strength of Mahjong Programs
SN - 978-989-758-737-5
AU - Tang S.
AU - Chen J.
AU - Wu I.
PY - 2025
SP - 124
EP - 132
DO - 10.5220/0013112500003890
PB - SciTePress