Gomoku: analysis of the game and of the player Wine

Abstract: Gomoku, also known as five in a row, is a classical board game, ideally suited for quickly testing novel AI techniques. With the aim of facilitating a developer willing to write a new Gomoku player, in this report we present an analysis of the main game concepts and strategies, which is wider and deeper than existing ones. Moreover, after discussing the general structure of an artificial player, we present and analyse a strong Gomoku player, named Wine, the code of which is freely available on the Internet and which is an excelent example of how a modern player is organised.