News Release Contact: Megan
E. Michael Bridge BaronTM Trumps Competition; Generates Great Game Products more than $1.58 Million in SalesCOLLEGE PARK, MD. . .Great Game Products, Inc., of Bethesda, Md., reached a milestone in fiscal year 2000, with sales of its lead product--Bridge BaronTM, a computer software program that strategically bids and plays bridge--totaling more than $1.58 million over the past three years. In 1990, Tom Throop, the original developer of the Bridge BaronTM and founder of Great Game Products, partnered with the University of Maryland to improve the Bridge BaronTM so that it could mimic the way a human would play bridge. Over the next seven years, university researchers Dana Nau, a computer science professor, and Stephen Smith, then a graduate student, worked on developing an artificial intelligence for the Bridge BaronTM. Classical game tree techniques are often used in developing computer games such as chess and checkers. But because of the time constraints for decision-making and the seemingly endless possible combinations of bridge hands, this technique was not feasible for bridge games. Nau's and Smith's approach, which posed common bridge strategies as a set of Hierarchical Task Network constructs that the Bridge BaronTM could manipulate, reduced the 6 x 1044 possible sequences the program would have had to analyze to just 300,000. This resulted in an improved Bridge BaronTM that is faster and has more possible ways to beat its opponent. In 1998, the university's Office of Technology Commercialization exclusively licensed the improved version of the Bridge BaronTM to Great Game Products. Since then, Great Game Products has sold more than 41,500 copies of the Bridge BaronTM, which is top-ranked by the American Contract Bridge League and is a five-time winner of the World Computer Bridge Championship. The Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) at the University of Maryland was established in 1986 to facilitate the transfer of information, life and physical science inventions developed at the university to business and industry. In the past 14 years, OTC has recorded more than 1000 technologies, secured more than 150 patents and executed more than 480 license agreements, generating more than $17 million in technology transfer income. In addition, 22 high-tech start-up companies have been formed based on technologies developed at the university.
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E. Michael |
| Updated 4/2001 |
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