Ingo Althöfer

Ingo Althöfer (born 1961)^[1] is a German mathematician and former professor of operations research at the University of Jena.^[2]

Althöfer in 2008

Althöfer earned his PhD in 1986 at Bielefeld University. His dissertation, Asymptotic Properties of Certain Competition Systems in Artificial Intelligence and Ecology, was supervised by Rudolf Ahlswede.^[3]

Contributions

Topics in Althöfer's professional research include the realization of finite metric spaces by shortest path metrics in graphs and their approximation by greedy spanners,^[4] algorithmic game theory and combinatorial game theory,^[5] and heuristic search algorithms for optimization problems.

Althöfer is also known for his inventions of games and puzzles, including dice game EinStein würfelt nicht!,^[6] for his experiments with self-assembly of Lego building blocks by running them through a washing machine,^[7] and for his innovations in computer-human chess playing. In the 1990s he tested his "drei hirn" ["3-brains"] system, in which a human decides between the choices of two computer chess players, against strong human players including grandmaster David Bronstein and woman grandmaster Sofia Polgar.^[8] In 2004 he and Timo Klaustermeyer introduced freestyle chess, a style of human chess playing allowing arbitrary consultation with computers or other people.^[9]

Books

• Menzer, Hartmut; Althöfer, Ingo (2014). Zahlentheorie und Zahlenspiele : Sieben ausgewählte Themenstellungen (in German). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-486-98963-2. OCLC 898769807.
• Althöfer, Ingo; Voigt, Roland (2014). Spiele, Rätsel, Zahlen : faszinierendes zu Lasker-Mühle, Sudoku-Varianten, Havannah, EinStein würfelt nicht, Yavalath, 3-Hirn-Schach ... (in German). Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum. ISBN 978-3-642-55301-1. OCLC 894170235.

He has also self-published other books through his personal publishing company, 3-Hirn Verlag, and is one of the editors of the multi-volume book series Rudolf Ahlswede’s Lectures on Information Theory.

Selected Papers

• Althöfer, I. (1988). "Nim games with arbitrary periodic moving orders". International Journal of Game Theory. 17 (3). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 165–175. doi:10.1007/bf01242859. ISSN 0020-7276. S2CID 118788463.
• Althöfer, Ingo (1991). "Data compression using an intelligent generator: The storage of chess games as an example". Artificial Intelligence. 52 (1). Elsevier BV: 109–113. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(91)90026-g. ISSN 0004-3702.
• Althöfer, Ingo (2004). "Improved game play by multiple computer hints". Theoretical Computer Science. 313 (3). Elsevier BV: 315–324. doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2003.08.012. ISSN 0304-3975.
• Althöfer, Ingo (10 November 2020). "Computer Chess and Chess Computers in East Germany". ICGA Journal. 42 (2–3). IOS Press: 152–164. doi:10.3233/icg-200163. ISSN 2468-2438. S2CID 226727158.

Selected Board Games

• EinStein würfelt nicht! (2005)
• Galtoni (2012), a mixture of Connect Four and the Galton board
• San Jego (2015), a variant of Clobber