AI for the card game of Hearts

Job: Write a set of C++ objects to play the card game Hearts. The code will be used in a Windows client and on a linux server. Requirements: Competently play all rule variations of Hearts. Download and play Hardwood Hearts at [login to view URL] to review current set of rules. The biggest variants are Spot Hearts, Partnership, and Singles. The bot must be able to attain a rating of 1600 playing against humans on our lobby server. The average human rating is 1500, the highest is 1900. This will be measured by playing at least 30 games against 3 other average human players useing different rule options. Have multiple difficulty levels. Easy, Medium, Hard. Not to cheat. AI can keep track of cards that has been played. But has no ability to peak at other players cards. Be very fast, less then 3 milliseconds per move. AI is part of a single threaded server that hosts over a thousand players. If the AI would be signifigantly better if allowed more time there is a possibility of seperateing the AI from the core server. The server is currently running on a Dual Xeon 2.4. Be portable, must compile with at least Visual C++ .NET and gcc Be very small. Compressed compiled code should be less then 50KB. So no large libraries. Basically if you plan to use any libraries let me know so I can review them. Communicate with me during the project. Seperate out generic code that could be reused for other card games, spades, euchre, canasta, etc. Fine tune AI, beta versions of the AI may be tested on our server to gather feedback from our players. We'll forward this feed back to you for fine tuneing. Seperate out generic code that could be reused for other card games, spades, euchre, canasta, etc. Fine tune AI, beta versions of the AI may be tested on our server to gather feedback from our players. We'll forward this feed back to you for fine tuneing. What you will be provided: A test version of the Windows client, Hardwood Hearts, that loads the AI as a seperate DLL. (Note in the release version the code will be compiled into the main DLL). It also has several features to help test. Please answer these questions: List experience directly related to AI. How good are you at the card game Hearts? What methods will you use to create the AI? (For example basic logic code, nerual nets, use libraries, etc) ## Deliverables Complete and fully-functional working program in executable form as well as complete and commented source code of all work done. Exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site). ## Platform Windows 95,98,ME,2000,XP Linux