Battle of the Bots

The first ever bot fight game in Commvault: Mancala or Kalah

		Mancala is a board game played between two individuals. The aim is to score maximum points to win the game.

		

		Rules of the Mancala Game:

		1.	Each player has 6 holes and 1 home pit on board they are numbered 1 to 6 from left to right.
		2.	Four stones are initially placed in each of the 12 holes.
		3.	Each player has a home pit to keep captured stones.
		4.	The game begins with one player picking up all of the stones in any one of the holes on his side.
			Moving counter-clockwise, the player deposits one of the stones in each hole until the stones run out.
		5.	If you run into your own home pit, deposit one piece in it. If you run into your opponent's home pit you have to skip it.
		6.	If the last piece you drop is in your own store, you get a free turn.
		7.	If the last piece you drop is in an empty hole on your side, you capture that piece and any pieces in the hole directly	opposite. Always place all captured pieces in your home pit.
		8.	The game ends when all six holes on either side of the Mancala board are empty.
		9.	The player who still has pieces in holes on his side of the board when the game ends captures all of those pieces and put them in the home pit.

		The winner is the player with the most pieces in their home pit at end.

		Rules for the bots:

		1.	Bot can be written in any language.
		2.	Every bot will have to implement following 4 operations which will be read via STDIN and output written on STDOUT.

			

		3.	Bots will have to maintain the state of mancala board and predict the best next move.
		4.	Your bot will be invoked with an argument which is the filename where you can log your and other player moves.
			These logs files will be saved for handling any discrepancy later.
		5.	There is a time out for predicting next move. If your bot takes more than 2 secs for any move it loses automatically.
		6.	In case your bot crashes or makes any illegal move you lose the game.
		7.	In case of this automatic loss other bot will be given max 48 points.
		8.	If you team name is ABC name your program should be in one file named ABC_bot. cpp or .py or .java etc.

		Sequence of Operation:

		1.	Controller starts both the bots, giving you the player id.
		2.	Controller sends message to the one player to make his move.
		3.	Player replies back to controller with his move.
		4.	Controller validates the move.
		5.	Controller sends last move to other player for his knowledge.
		6.	Other Player acknowledges that he noted down the move.
		7.	Controllers identify the next player, and sends message asking him to move.
		8.	Continue with step 2, until game is over.
		9.	Controller judges the winner.
		


		Judgement rules:

 		There will be two games played between bots each one given first move once for fairness.
		At the end of each game bots will have scored points [0 to 48] for that game.
		Scores of both the games will be added and the bot with higher score wins the game.
		In case of a tie, controller also records the time taken by bots in each move, the bot which took less time will win the game.
		As the bots win, they will keep moving to the next round and winner of the FINAL match will be WINNER.
		

Winner and Finalists

Here is the winner and the finalists of Bot Fight.

Winner

PiBot: Vikash Kumar

Finalist

mkv: Vivek M

Finalist

MMBotFighter: Leny Viswambharan

Finalist

MMBotFighter: Shaily Mehta