Tutorial on Monte Carlo Tree Search - The Algorithm Behind AlphaGo

Between 9 and 15 March, 2016, the second-highest ranked Go player, Lee Sidol, took on a computer program named AlphaGo. AlphaGo emphatically outplayed and outclassed Mr. Sidol and won the series 4-1. Designed by Google's DeepMind, the program has spawned many other developments in AI, including AlphaGo Zero. These breakthroughs are widely considered as stepping stones towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). In this article, I will introduce you to the algorithm at the heart of AlphaGo – Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). This algorithm has one main purpose – given the state of a game, choose the most promising move.