Morpion Solitaire is a popular single player game, performed with paper and pencil. Due to its large state space (on the order of the game of Go) traditional search algorithms, such as MCTS, have not been able to find good solutions. A later algorithm, Nested Rollout Policy Adaptation, was able to find a new record of 82 steps, albeit with large computational resources. After achieving this record, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no further progress reported, for about a decade. In this paper we take the recent impressive performance of deep self-learning reinforcement learning approaches from AlphaGo/AlphaZero as inspiration to design a searcher for Morpion Solitaire. A challenge of Morpion Solitaire is that the state space is sparse, there are few win/loss signals. Instead, we use an approach known as ranked reward to create a reinforcement learning self-play framework for Morpion Solitaire. This enables us to find medium-quality solutions with reasonable computational effort. Our record is a 67 steps solution, which is very close to the human best (68) without any other adaptation to the problem than using ranked reward. We list many further avenues for potential improvement.

If you've had your eye on an open world game like Marvel's Spider-Man, The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2, but didn't think you'd ever have the time to play it, now might be your chance. Whether you like to explore every corner of a world, complete every side quest to score 100 per cent, or prefer to stick to the main quest, open world games pretty much let you do whatever you feel like, all at your own pace. Here we share a selection of the most absorbing open world games to explore and get lost in right now. With over 100 hours of core and side-quest gameplay, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is sure to keep boredom at bay. The dark fantasy game sees you play as Geralt of Rivia, mercenary Monster Slayer.

Is there a video game you've been meaning to play but not yet found the time? If so, now might be the perfect opportunity to complete a few. From first person shooters to open world RPGs, as well as family friendly games, there is a wide offering of video games to entertain young and adult gamers. Ahead we bring you ten games to keep you busy if you're bored at home... Set in America 1899 at the end of the wild west era, Red Dead Redemption 2 sees you play as Van der Linde gang leader Arthur Morgan, who is forced to flee from lawmen after a robbery goes badly wrong. Explore the rugged heartland of America on horseback as you evade federal agents and bounty hunters who are hot on your tail.