# Can ai's play boardgames?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Tags:** board-card-word-game, chess, ai\
**Created:** [April 20, 2026, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428 "2026-04-20T14:27:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2026, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428/81 "2026-05-08T11:16:45Z")

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> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> It wasn’t simply fed a bunch of games. It was provided with a very large space of games generated by an array of 5000 TPUs. Only over 24 hours, but we might expect that there were many billions or trillions of games.

Yes–a “bunch” of games. I was purposely being somewhat facetiously casual in my choice of words. I know it was millions or billions of games via self-play. (Online sources say 44 million games in 9 hours. No info about how many in a 24-hour period, though I suppose that could be inferrable.)

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**Author:** ![IridiumIodineSulfur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b9e5f3/32.png) [@IridiumIodineSulfur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IridiumIodineSulfur)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2026, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428/82 "2026-07-31T19:17:01Z")

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Yeah, I consider feeding it games teaching it to play them.

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**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2026, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428/83 "2026-07-31T22:27:49Z")

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I mean, there’s really no other way for someone to learn the games either by observing them or being given the rules. So everything has to be taught in some way, by your definition. And I was wrong in that quote. It was MuZero that wasn’t given any rules, not Alpha Zero.

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**Author:** ![IridiumIodineSulfur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b9e5f3/32.png) [@IridiumIodineSulfur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IridiumIodineSulfur)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-ais-play-boardgames/1029428/84 "2026-08-06T23:16:47Z")

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I think it’s one thing to intentionally feed it games and another for the AI to have to do its on research and feed itself games, if that makes sense?

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