Tic_Tac_Toe

Overview

This bot plays on a 10×10 board aiming to get five in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). It uses:

1. Immediate tactics

   • Win scan: checks every empty cell—if placing there yields five in a row, play it.
   • Block scan: checks opponent’s potential wins and blocks them.

2. Strategic search

   • Iterative deepening minimax with alpha‑beta pruning (depth ≤ 15).
   • Move generation limited to empty cells within a 2‑cell “neighborhood” of existing pieces (or center on an empty board) to reduce branching.
   • Time control: aborts deeper search via a TimeOutException after 4.8 s, falling back to the best completed depth.

3. Heuristic evaluation

   • Scores board patterns (open/closed runs of length 1–4) for both players.
   • Treats a confirmed win (+∞) or loss (–∞) as terminal.

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Files in this package

• bot
  The compiled single‐file executable for Ubuntu 24.04.

• bot.cpp
  Full C++17 source code implementing the strategy above.

• json.hpp
  nlohmann/json single‑header library for parsing state.json.

• README.md
  This file.

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Build Instructions

Ensure you have a C++17 compiler installed. In bot directory, run:

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 -o bot bot.cpp