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Combining three major facets of Alfonso's final and most personal work, this holistic study utilizes a philological approach involving codicology, hermeneutics, history of art, iconology, paleography, and philosophy. Like his Cantigas de Santa María, with its vast musical, poetic and artistic dimensions, the Book of Games is a largely unexplored multi-media treasure trove of knowledge about thirteenth-century games, art and symbolism as well as personal information about the Wise King himself. Chapter I explains the historical chess, dice, backgammon and mill games ands offers the first complete English translation of the Book. Descriptions and diagrams of all 144 games, including PowerPoint presentations of all 103 chess problems using a font specially designed to match the original manuscript exactly, are presented in an international format which brings these challenging and entertaining games to life. Chapter II surveys all 151 illuminations, exploring their cultural value and identifying portraits of Alfonso, his wife, his lover, his children, his friends and his sources. Alongside traditional medieval iconography, these may represent some of the earliest known likenesses in medieval portraiture and some of the first private, non-iconographic images of a Spanish king. Chapter III interprets the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical meanings of each game according to the Hermetic principle "As above, so below" as well as the numerological symbolism and didactic structure reflected in the book's Scholastic structure. Each game in the Libro de los juegos contains a clue "pora los entendudos e mayormientre pora aquellos que saben la Arte de Astronomia" (fol. 95r) for understanding the connection between astrology and human affairs. At the end of his ill-starred life Alfonso saw reflected in the microcosm of these games, the determinism inherent in the workings of the universe. By studying the patterns in these games, Alfonso hoped to discover how best to play the game of life using both his "seso," or skill, and his lucky number seven. The numerological and astrological significance of the numbers seven and twelve, present in the entire work's structure and especially the concluding games, relate the Book of Games to the Alfonsine legal, scientific and religious corpus.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-04-12T15:27:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 sidneypinheiroduarte.pdf: 3177888 bytes, checksum: b153639cc3f9975d5d1e86f005b301f6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T03:32:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 sidneypinheiroduarte.pdf: 3177888 bytes, checksum: b153639cc3f9975d5d1e86f005b301f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T03:32:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 sidneypinheiroduarte.pdf: 3177888 bytes, checksum: b153639cc3f9975d5d1e86f005b301f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-23 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação trata dos temas de probabilidade existentes no Jogo de Gamão que unem o lúdico ao raciocínio matemático. De início, é elaborada uma revisão de probabilidade quando são resolvidos alguns problemas em caráter geral, sem fazer uso de teorias mais refinadas de probabilidade. Posteriormente, é feito uma apresentação história do Jogo de Gamão seguido de suas regras e, por fim, através de determinadas posições de peças e de seus diagramas, são analisadas e resolvidas várias situações problemas envolvendo o Jogo de Gamão. / This master’s thesis presents some probability calculations arising in bagkgammon, a game which unites ludic to mathematical thinking. At first we present a review of probability. Then we introduce backgammon, its history and its rules. At last, we solve some probability problems related to the game.

Artificial Intelligence has seen enormous progress in many disciplines in the recent years. Particularly, digitalized versions of board games require artificial intelligence application due to their complex decision-making environment. Game developers aim to create board game software agents which are intelligent, adaptive and responsive. However, the process of designing and developing such a software agent is far from straight forward due the nature and diversity of each game. The thesis examines and presents a detailed procedure of constructing a software agent for backgammon variants, using temporal difference, artificial neural networks and backpropagation. Different artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms used in board games, are overviewed and presented. Finally, the thesis describes the development and implementation of a software agent for the backgammon variant called Swedish Tables and evaluates its performance. / Artificiell intelligens har sett enorma framsteg inom många discipliner de senare åren. Speciellt, digitaliserade brädspel kräver implementering av Artificiell intelligens då deras beslutfattande logik är väldigt komplex. Dataspelutvecklarnas syfte och mål är att skapa programvaror som är intelligenta, adaptiva och lyhörda. Dock konstruktionsoch utvecklingsprocess för att kunna skapa en sådan mjukvara är långtifrån att vara faställd, mest på grund av diversitet av naturen av varje spel. Denna avhandlingen forskar och föreslår en detaljerad procedur för att bygga en "Software Agent" för olika slags Backagammon, genom att använda AI neurala nätvärk och back-propagation metoder. Olika artificiell intelligensoch maskininlärningsalgoritmer som används i brädspel forskas och presenteras. Slutligen denna avhandling beskriver implementeringen och utvecklingen av ett mjukvaru agent för en backgammonvariant, närmare bestämt av "Svenska Tabeller" samt utvärderar dess prestanda.

Based upon earlier studies in the fields of psychology and game design by Frank and Gilovich (1988) and Yee (2007), this paper examines the influence of color on players of backgammon. The paper examines the probability of a player hitting an opponent’s piece when possible in backgammon depending on the color of the checkers. The data sample was compared using a t-test but showed no significant correlation. Based upon the results it was concluded that the Proteus Effect is not as effectively achieved through units in board games compared to avatars in virtual worlds.

The thesis is dedicated to the study and implementation of methods used for learning from the course of playing. The chosen game for this thesis is Backgammon. The algorithm used for training neural networks is called the temporal difference learning with use of eligible traces. This algorithm is also known as TD(lambda). The theoretical part describes algorithms for playing games without learning, introduction to reinforcement learning, temporal difference learning and introduction to artificial neural networks. The practical part deals with application of combination of neural networks and TD(lambda) algorithms.