Using Monte Carlo tree search and machine learning to learn a heuristic function

Minimax algorithm is one of the most widely used algorithms for playing two-player games. It uses a heuristic function that estimates the benefits of reaching a given game state for both players. In this bachelor thesis we attempt to automatically construct that kind of a function for the game of Hex. Different models of supervised machine learning are trained on learning samples, generated by simulations of MCTS. As a result, the player that uses minimax with α-β and the learnt function performs worse than the player that uses pure MCTS. However, the player combining advantages of both players achieves better results than MCTS