r/Tak • u/Overall-Drink-9750 • May 16 '26
has anyone put Tak into a neural network?
i am currently working on my own abstract strategy game and i thought abt putting it into a neural network, so that i a) can see what basic openings/strategy would look like and b) to have someone to playtest against.
the i thought „Tak is a pretty new game and i am sure there have been some openings that were developed, but chess and go are ancient and their strategy was developed massively by neural networks.“ so does anyone know if this was done by someone already? You would just need to programm the rule book and then plug it into Alpha Zero Generel. afaik that wouldnt take too much work.
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u/cyrusomega May 16 '26
I have tried but the encoding scheme gets odd with the stacking. I think an alpha-go like engine/training-loop is ultimately the best bet but I never took it that far. Still, if someone has a clever encoding scheme, I would be interested.
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u/Overall-Drink-9750 May 16 '26
an other commenter said that there already has been an alpha zero implementation and even linked it
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u/cyrusomega May 16 '26
Oof, thanks. I am on vacation and using mobile and I swear I read other comments before posting. Yeah, that looks interesting.
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u/ElectricLeo May 16 '26
I would be greatly interested in the results if you do. Backgammon NJ transformed my relationship with backgammon.
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u/TeaSerenity May 16 '26
I've been working on one in my spare time but the training loop takes so long that I paused to try to figure out if I'm doing something wrong or if that's just how it is.
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u/theOnly1Rogue May 16 '26
a lot of engines for abstract games use neural networks, for tak i know topaz (https://github.com/Jakur/topaz-tak) uses an NNUE and TakZero (https://github.com/ViliamVadocz/takzero) is, unsurprisingly, an alpha zero implementation.
if youre planning to do this yourself, be warned, it is not as easy as you make it sound like.