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Persian classical literature texts are among the prominent manifestations of Iran cultural heritage, in which careful and scholarly reflection can expose to the audience unread angles of the text and Iranian thought. To achieve such a goal, one must have a more rigorous form of these texts more than anything else; because the passing of time may have caused forgetfulness, neglect, deletion, displacement and even metamorphosis on their texture and construction for various reasons. As a result, it has offered different and even sometimes readings contradictory to some aspects of these texts, which in few cases, has puzzled and sometimes confused the audience. So, due to this necessity, we read some leading texts emphasizing different versions and special points related to backgammon and chess. We used a descriptive-analytical method and reread the texts in an inductive manner critically. In reread evidence, while defending all the wise efforts made, we got different obvious manifestations, taste perceptions, unusual distortions, my suggestions, etc., and shared these with the audience. The important and at the same time sad point is that most of these misreadings and early my readings have been transferred to later commentators' writings, which has made it difficult for audiences, even educated ones, to read the texts. We hope this study, with some suggestions, take a step towards correcting some errors found in the texts.

This paper adopts a cultural biography perspective in examining some of the different ways board games are portrayed in the movies. It outlines the evidence base presented in appendices 1 and 2 and running to some 300 films. It identifies some of the shared linkages between board games, digital games and films and explores in more detail the role of dice, the way games shape and define character, place and time and how games help to define the past and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching with graduated guidance on teaching the playing backgammon skill, which is one of the leisure skills, to children with "Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)". Three children with ASD participated in this research. A multiple probe design across the participants was used in order to examine the effectiveness graduated guidance on teaching playing backgammon skill. The research was conducted by using. The dependent variable of this research is the level of acquiring playing backgammon skill. Additionally, the independent variable of this research is graduated guidance. According to the findings of this study, graduated guidance was effective on teaching playing backgammon skill, which is one of the leisure skills. In other words, result of this study revealed that graduated guidance was effective on teaching backgammon playing skill to children with ASD. In addition, it was determined that after finished instruction sessions, children with ASD were able to maintain the playing backgammon skill that they learned and also generalize the acquired skill to different person. In the light of the limitations identified and the findings, recommendations were made for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Archaeologica Brunensia is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The popular texts of ancient Persian poetry and prose constitute a part of Iran's cultural heritage. Familiarity with different aspects of this cultural heritage depends on accessing valid forms and explanations with no distortion.Referring to invalid copies and explanations of such works means distancing their original form, and consequently, alienating them from the manifestations of cultural heritage. Among such texts are the works of Khaghani and Nizami. Various scholars have tried to take a step towards unraveling some verbal and semantic aspects. They have sometimes been successful and sometimes made erroneous interpretations. In the present study, using the descriptive-analytical method based on induction, a critical reading of some academic explanations of Khaghani and Nizami’s poems focusing on chess and backgammon game terms and their accessories and the correct or approximately correct and accurate description of the contents is attempted. The results of the study show that some commentators, facing the combinations and terms of these two games, have either ignored the past or have not understood the essence of the problem. So, they have made unjustified interpretations. It is worth noting that because the authors’ aim has been a critical re-reading of such explanations, we have been forced to show disproportionate and unjustifiable aspects of the interpretations made in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Middle Persian text The Explanation of Chess and the Invention of Backgammon (WČ) is dated to the reign of Xusrō I. It describes a contest between the Persian and Indian kings represented by their leading wise men. The famous sage Wuzurgmihr defeats his Indian counterpart at chess and invents the game of backgammon, the board being given cosmological significance with the turning of the counters and roll of the die corresponding to fate. This article presents a new textual source where many of the same themes are evident: the courtly context, the competition between rival sages from Persia and India, the interpretation in terms of cosmology and fate. However, this new source is from the fourth century ce or earlier and the personages involved are different, raising vital questions about the history of the topic and its development in Persian and other late antique literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JANE AUSTEN WAS A GAMER, AND QUITE POSSIBLY A GAME THEOrist, too, as Michael Suk-Young Chwe suggests. Austen often played a variety of games with her nieces and nephews, like [...]

Copyright of Archeologia Medievale: Cultura Materiale, Insediamenti, Territorio is the property of All'Insegna del Giglio s.a.s. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract In recent years, neural networks have enjoyed a renaissance as function approximators in reinforcement learning. Two decades after Tesauro's TD-Gammon achieved near top-level human performance in backgammon, the deep reinforcement learning algorithm DQN achieved human-level performance in many Atari 2600 games. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we propose two activation functions for neural network function approximation in reinforcement learning: the sigmoid-weighted linear unit (SiLU) and its derivative function (dSiLU). The activation of the SiLU is computed by the sigmoid function multiplied by its input. Second, we suggest that the more traditional approach of using on-policy learning with eligibility traces, instead of experience replay, and softmax action selection can be competitive with DQN, without the need for a separate target network. We validate our proposed approach by, first, achieving new state-of-the-art results in both stochastic SZ-Tetris and Tetris with a small 10 × 10 board, using TD(λ) learning and shallow dSiLU network agents, and, then, by outperforming DQN in the Atari 2600 domain by using a deep Sarsa(λ) agent with SiLU and dSiLU hidden units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the 2 × 4 variation of a popular 2-player imperfect information game Chinese dark chess (CDC). The 2 × 4 version is solved by computing the game-theoretical value of each position for all possible material combinations with at most four red pieces and four black pieces. The experimental results show that where to make the first move, which must be a flip, is the most important factor to affect the outcome of a game. We find that choosing a square to flip that has the best-expected outcome may not be the best strategy. Instead, a square that has the best-expected difference before and after the first move is made should be chosen. We also discover that 2 × 4 CDC is unfair and it is favorable to the second player, but some openings are fair. We believe observations and techniques made here can be used to improve the performance of programs for playing the original 4 × 8 full version of CDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the 2 × 4 variation of a popular 2-player imperfect information game Chinese dark chess (CDC). The 2 × 4 version is solved by computing the game-theoretical value of each position for all possible material combinations with at most four red pieces and four black pieces. The experimental results show that where to make the first move, which must be a flip, is the most important factor to affect the outcome of a game. We find that choosing a square to flip that has the best-expected outcome may not be the best strategy. Instead, a square that has the best-expected difference before and after the first move is made should be chosen. We also discover that 2 × 4 CDC is unfair and it is favorable to the second player, but some openings are fair. We believe observations and techniques made here can be used to improve the performance of programs for playing the original 4 × 8 full version of CDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El aburrimiento del hombre en todos los tiempos, originó que inventase lo que hoy llamamos ocio, o sea, la manera o forma de cubrir el tiempo muerto. De ahí nacieron los miles de juegos de los que ahora disfrutamos.Through all the times, the boredom of mankind originated the invention of what we call nowadays games and entertainment, that is to say, the way of occupying our leisure time. This was the origin of the thousands of board, card and court games we presently enjoy.